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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] A Water Strategy for the United States
  • Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:58:44 -0700


A Water Strategy for the United States
By Jim Thebaut and Erik Webb
http://awramedia.org/mainblog/2009/01/09/water-strategy-for-the-usa-op-ed-by
-jim-thebaut-and-erik-webb/

Those Americans even aware of Zimbabwe's recent fight against the
disruption and death caused by cholera, a highly treatable water-borne
disease, carry an unfounded confidence that clean, abundant water will
always be available and a similar water-borne disease epidemic could never
occur here. However, many areas of our nation aren't far from the
conditions facing third-world countries in ensuring adequate, clean
drinking water for their people. Various regions of our country face
problems including dwindling surface and groundwater supplies, non-existent
water and sanitation infrastructure, closely packed septic systems,
inadequate reinvestment in existing water treatment infrastructure, and
expanding contamination of surface water including both biological and new
chemicals (including pharmaceuticals) that all increase our risk of
water-borne illness outbreaks.

Like the proverbial frog in slowly heated water, we are rapidly
reaching crisis levels without truly being aware of the risks. This crisis
is curable if the United States chooses to establish a modern, integrated,
national water policy framework, implements sustainable water use planning,
invests in the changes needed to pursue water resource sustainability, and
provides leadership to assist the rest of the world meet similar goals.

The region of the country closest to the breaking point is the
Colorado River basin, which provides drinking water for 30 million people
in the American Southwest. Although most of the region's residents still
have adequate, untainted water, portions of the Navajo and Hopi reservation
communities of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado - about 80,000 people
- live with inadequate plumbing and sanitation and regularly drink
untreated water. This portion of the Native American population suffers
from birth defects and skin diseases out of proportion to the rest of the
country. Additionally, it is anticipated that as climate change causes
rising water temperatures greater disease risk will occur.

Creating plentiful, clean water for the Southwest's Native Americans
is one small part of a bigger picture. Similar water supply and sanitation
challenges are emerging throughout the nation. Over two thirds of state's
chief water managers anticipate drought and other water crisis in the near
future. Infrastructure investment is grossly inadequate to maintain current
systems, let alone meet the demand anticipated by another 100 million
people over the next 3-4 decades.

We've faced these issues before and started down a path of
coordinated policies. In the post-World War II era, the nation faced a
decade of drought that triggered intense national pressure to coordinate
expansion of water supplies. Congressional committees and White House
offices were coordinated in order to address water supply issues allowing
water development to proceed at an accelerated pace. We then realized and
began to face the environmental consequences of expansion with greater
national emphasis on protection of natural resources. Unfortunately, while
addressing environmental issues our over-reaction to development allowed us
to sweep away the essential coordination functions embodied in the White
House Water Resources Council. The consequence is that our nation's water
policy has devolved into a tangled mess of competing initiatives and
policies intended to govern increasing demands, managing runoff, pollution
abatement, improving quality, using reservoirs and underground water
storage, conservation and efficiency improvements, all overseen by a
complex infrastructure of federal, state and local bureaus, departments and
agencies with overlapping and competing responsibilities. As a result, we
have a hodgepodge of laws and regulations that benefit some at the expense
of others. At best, our nation's water use and planning structure is
fractured and inefficient. At worst, it's headed for complete breakdown.

Presently, at the federal level alone, 20 agencies and bureaus, under
six cabinet departments, directed by 13 congressional committees with 23
subcommittees and five appropriations subcommittees are responsible for
water-resource management. Consolidation of these responsibilities would
make the job of managing water resources easier, but such consolidation of
power and control is unlikely. A more likely approach might involve White
House coordination of partnerships between federal agencies and
coordination with state and local agencies to create integrated water
policies as part of a national framework.

Additionally, decision-makers at every level must learn to embrace
the principles of integrated water resources management, the concept of
considering multiple viewpoints before making decisions. While this
practice is gaining acceptance and application, it is woefully under-used
in our highly fractionated U.S. water management system.

Integrated management would be based on clear principles. For
example, as a nation, we must begin to treat water as we would any other
scarce resource and learn to live within our means. This requires
efficiency and planning for sustainable use in the face of increasing
demands for water, particularly in agriculture, industry and power
production.

One of the best ways to promote sustainability is to make consumers
aware of the true cost of water. What we pay to the water company each
month only reflects the price to bring clean water to our taps and does not
reflect the value of the resource in each of its various uses. Water
management, resource expansion, environmental protection, and
infrastructure maintenance is expensive, and much of the cost is
redistributed through state and federal taxes and local and regional bond
measures. Transparency about the real cost of water should be a fundamental
principle, irrespective of the source of funds that underwrite the supply.

The good news is that the United States has experience with
integrating national water policy. The Water Resources Planning Act of 1965
created the Water Resources Council, empowered to assess the adequacy of
the nation's water supplies, to establish principles and standards for
federal participants in water projects, and to review agricultural, urban,
energy, industrial, recreational and fish and wildlife water needs. The Act
also established a grant program to assist state development of
comprehensive water and land use plans. This law was passed in an era
before we understood the full environmental impact of our water resource
management actions, and therefore needs to be strengthened to be effective.
Nevertheless, the law creating the Council was never repealed.

It is now time that we re-empower and revise the Act to coordinate
the nation's efforts toward sustainable water resources development.

This revision could benefit by incorporating the much stronger policy
framework for international water policy objectives embodied in the Senator
Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, signed into law in late 2005, which
establishes access to safe water and sanitation as a major U.S. foreign
policy objective. Merging our domestic and international water policy
framework, and placing its operation directly under the umbrella of the
White House, would unite and organize our national and international
efforts and help solve both domestic and international water problems.

When it comes to drinking water, our nation and the planet are
clearly at a crossroads. Ensuring each member of our nation and the world
community access to clean water is a humanitarian mission that will assure
a safer world and avoid environmental calamity. Population growth,
increased demands and changes in our hydrological systems caused by climate
change make addressing the water crisis an imperative. The United States
can assume global leadership by setting a viable example in solving our own
drinking water and sanitation issues, finding a viable way to coordinate
our national water policy, and coupling our domestic efforts with our
international policy.



Jim Thebaut is the writer, director and executive producer of public
television's "The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?" and "Running
Dry," a documentary about the global water crisis. Erik Webb is a PhD
hydrologist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and a former
Congressional Fellow with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee.







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