but the levee was dry

[Guest guest]

Is the American Southwest Running Dry?

 

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted January 23, 2009.

 

 

 

Filmmaker Jim Thebaut talks about the precarious future of the

Southwest and the call for a national water plan.

 

 

Twisting through seven states before reaching Mexico, the Colorado

River is the lifeline of the American Southwest. But with increasing

population, thoughtless development and the added pressures of climate

change, the river -- and the region -- are in dire straights.

 

In the documentary The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?,

filmmaker Jim Thebaut looks at the state of the Southwest's water and

if there will be enough to go around. He examines stressed water

sources like the Colorado River, the Rio Grande and the Sacramento-San

Joaquin river system in California, as well as Lake Powell, which

straddles Utah and Arizona on the Colorado River, and Lake Mead, also

on the Colorado, between Nevada and Arizona.

 

With interviews from policymakers, congressional members, scientists

and water experts, Thebaut issues a wake-up call for not just the

Southwest, but the whole country. The film takes a critical eye to

cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Palm

Springs, Calif. There is also a special focus on Native American

communities, which are particularly hard hit by our country's poor

water management and environmental oversight. Lacking political

leverage, many Native American communities lack adequate clean, safe

drinking water.

 

The film was inspired by the book, Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis

in Water and What We Can Do About It, published by the late Sen. Paul

Simon in 1998. And Thebaut attempts to not just paint a grim picture

of reality, but to offer some solutions. Thebaut is a veteran

filmmaker who produced the film Running Dry about the global water

crisis. He has a background in planning and therefore pays close

attention to development and the ways in which water policy should be

intertwined with our plans for growth.

 

Thebaut is a strong advocate for a comprehensive national water policy

that brings all parties to the table. And he has called the Bush

administration's approach to water management " borderline immoral. "

 

Tara Lohan: So what inspired you to do this?

 

Jim Thebaut: It goes way back. I have a degree in landscape

architecture and planning. And for a few years I was a planner in the

Northwest, and I used to do environmental impact statements for

planning studies. I also used to produce environmental documentaries

in Seattle. When I first became aware of Sen. Paul Simon's work and

read his book, Tapped Out, it just seemed like a natural for me to put

something together. It is an overall project to educate everyone about

the global, humanitarian water crises. That's why I've gone about as I

have, with two different documentaries and versions of each.

 

TL: What was one of the most shocking things you learned about water

in the Southwest while working on this?

 

JT: The gravity of the problem. The fact that the Colorado is the

lowest level it has ever been, and that chances are there is not going

to be enough water to generate energy at the Hoover Dam. The

ramifications of that are pretty profound. Just imagine that the water

is so low in the Colorado that it cannot support our agriculture

community, that it cannot support our energy systems, and just suppose

that, like in some developing countries, that water is only available

every two or three days. And just imagine there would be communities

that will not get any water all. And I'm really worried about the

Native American community.

 

And then the other big deal is our depletion of groundwater. That is

the reason I did this documentary. I did Running Dry, which was to

alert the world to the global water crisis. But as I was rolling it

out across the U.S., I became quickly aware that the American public

have an odd way of looking at the rest of the world. They don't relate

to it as being part of their world. And when I present the reality

that every 15 seconds a child dies from a lack of water or water-

related diseases, they always think, " that's over there, it doesn't

have anything to do with us. "

 

So, my goal was to bring the crises home to everyone's front doorstep.

 

TL: Do you think folks are starting to get it?

 

JT: Well, it depends on the community. People are so overwhelmed by

crises. We are in the midst of this horrifying economic crisis, we got

people losing their houses and their jobs. It is hard to grasp the

reality of some other crises coming down the path. There has been a

lot of media, but we need to educate the body politic, educate public

policymakers. They've been somewhat receptive. But we've got to keep

the hammer down.

 

TL: In the film, you interview a lot of politicians. Who are the best

at taking on this issue?

 

JT: All folks in the film are receptive. And mostly all of them are

the Southwest, except (Rep. Edward J.) Markey, D-Mass., who is also

acutely aware. (Sen. Jeff) Bingaman, D-N.M., and (Sen. and our next

Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar, D-Colo., and (Sen. Jon) Kyl R-Ariz.,

were all former attorneys general and water lawyers, so they are also

able to provide a lot of insight into the issue.

 

Another one is (Rep. Mary) Bono Mack, R-Calif., in Palm Springs where

there are global-warming issues that will affect that area, and she is

very aware of that. All those people, I think are all aware and have a

level of expertise. They all said the same thing, whether Republican

or Democrat, it transcends political ideology, it is a people issue.

 

TL: Are any of them making any effort to combat this with legislation?

 

JT: There are some efforts with legislation. I just wrote a paper with

Dr. Eric Webb, who now works at Sandia National Labs. We have 20

agencies in the federal government that all deal with water. So

essentially, our shots are being scattered. We thought it was

important to have a central office under the White House to deal with

these issues -- something that would be under the office of Counsel of

Environment Quality.

 

The past administration has been beyond negligent -- borderline

immoral in that they haven't addressed these issues. We have

infrastructure problems. We lose 40 percent of our water in some of

our major cities because the infrastructure is 100 years old.

 

Being an environmental planner, I'm a land-use person, and I think we

need a paradigm shift in the way we live our lives and plan our

communities.

 

TL : As a planner, does looking at the way Southwest communities are

growing make you crazy?

 

JT: We do have uncontrolled growth, but it's not just in the

Southwest.

 

Is Seattle making the same mistakes L.A. is making? I produced my

first documentary called the Tale of Two Cities, which looked at L.A.

and Seattle. And Seattle is, actually, making many of the same

mistakes. I think there has been some growth management in the

Northwest, it is a different ethic. But I worry about uncontrolled

growth and sprawl. The other thing, is that we just hit 300 million

people, we are getting big. It is projected that by the middle of this

century we will be well over 400 million, and much is projected for

the Southwest. We need to plan how to deal with this incredible growth

so that we don't compromise the integrity of the environment.

 

We have to be smart and creative and elect people who get it and have

an ethic around water issues.

 

TL: What are the solutions?

 

JT: There are so many issues -- every region needs to be self-

sufficient. I'm an advocate for reuse but that takes a lot of

education. We need to look at the whole issue of public good versus

private land ownership. We can't continue to allow people to be able

to just mine groundwater. We need education. We need to educate

citizens on the gravity of the problem.

 

We need to look at land-use planning and how we are going to build in

the future. The days are over for sprawling everywhere. When we are

building, we need to be thinking about how we build and the kinds of

materials. And water is so tied into energy. We need more

conservation. Conservation is good economics. We need to look at

technology and look at alternative energy systems. I think we need to

go into areas of solar and wind and new, creative kinds of approaches.

 

Then there is desalination. I think desalination has a place in the

future, but I don't think it is silver bullet. It costs a lot of

money, uses tremendous amounts of energy and has a significant

environmental impact. But there might be ways that we can use new

technology that will help desalination not use so much energy.

 

I think mostly, we need to start looking at water issues as part of

the big picture -- we need big-picture plans regionally and

nationally.

 

We need to adhere to the laws we have, like the National Environmental

Policy Act. It always boggles my mind, even environmental

organizations don't understand the gravity of the greatest

environmental law ever created. If we use it effectively for decision-

making, it would solve a lot of problems.

 

TL: What about a national water policy?

 

JT: We don't have one. We need to get everyone around the table to

help come up with one and implement it. I think we need to start

prioritizing what needs to be done. We need regional and local policy,

and we need an national overview. The Southwest has its own issues,

but so does the Midwest and the Southeast. Infrastructure is one of

the main things, and so is groundwater. Many states, like California

and Texas, have no laws dealing with groundwater issues. We need to

educate people on the issues related to the depletion of groundwater.

 

I picked on Phoenix a little. But water goes there at the expense of

the rest of the state, and it is de-watering the rivers and the

ecosystems. We need to look at issues from an environmental

perspective. Too often we look at supply but do so at the expense of

natural systems. You can't come up with good water policy without

looking at land-use planning. Planning with nature is really an

important issue. You have to plan within an ecological system, and

education is an important part of that.

 

We need curriculum for schools and to help get teachers to focus on

these issues. And on the relationship between energy and water, as

well as agriculture and water.

 

We need to solve our own problem in our country to have credibility in

the rest of the world. And we have to be able to help our Native

Americans. If we don't help our indigenous people, what kind of

credibility do we have with the rest of the world?

 

Whatever solutions we come up with, everyone needs to be at the table

-- Native Americans, the environmental community, activists,

engineers, scientists and policymakers.

 

TL: We recently saw Atlanta nearly run out of water completely. Does

any state or region seem to have a backup plan for severe drought and

overuse?

 

JT: No one has a plan, that's why we need to plan now. The " Global

Trend 2025 " study on the CIA Web site shows that certain regions of

the world will really be affected by climate change, and the American

Southwest could be a dust bowl. Is there a Plan B? No. We need to

start planning a national water policy that looks at each region and

what we can do to mitigate. And we gotta do it now.