World Water Day is coming up in a week and a half, so with that in mind I’d like to share a few thoughts.
Potable water, beyond any other resource, is the most precious commodity on earth. Without it we cannot physically survive. It quenches our thirst, feeds our crops, sanitizes our homes. As Americans, we blithely ignore the importance of this substance, because so easily does water come to us through a system of our pipes and taps. I am not exempt from this. While I attempt to watch my use in various ways, I invariably find myself dragging out the simple pleasure of a hot shower, sending 2.5 to 10 gallons of water per minute down the drain and off into Neverland. It might not sound like a lot, until you consider that my routine 15-minute showers consume more water than three people in the developing world use in a day.
Of course, my water consumption in temperate Massachusetts, where potable water is relatively abundant and delivered through a decent infrastructure, does not have a direct effect on world water issues. At home in southern California, though, I receive water that most likely comes from the Colorado River, a waterway that once flowed into Mexico to nourish a flourishing agricultural system and a thriving delta ecosystem. Today, the Colorado River delta below the border is dead, and Mexico receives barely legal water from its neighbors to the north. The water is so polluted and so saline after it flows through seven states’ agricultural and sewage systems, that it kills crops. Northern Mexico’s agricultural industry is failing, even as California vies for more water to sate its ever thirsty population. I might note that 70 to 80 percent of this water goes to California’s large agribusinesses through illegal subsidies. Further, while the river’s water was theoretically divided evenly between the arbitrarily-named Upper and Lower Basin states, California has, over the years, claimed a larger and larger portion through first appropriation rights, while the overall amount of water flowing through the river decreases steadily.
The original terms of the contract were set based on unusually high flow rates, but California insists on receiving its granted portion and no across-the-board cuts, leaving other states to flounder. Add to this the fact that California’s avaricious consumption encourages a “use it or lose it” mentality among the other states, and the West has a recipe for disaster. Urban Californians are working to reduce their consumption at home, but without a reduction in irrigation water, there is only so much the public can do.
Governmental subsidies in the arid west falsely represent the value of water and allow gross overindulgence by large farms, and some private interests argue that the best way to fix this is by privatizing the system and letting the free market reign. Unfortunately, in many places, such a system makes little sense.
In places like Bolivia, where the government was forced to privatize water in order to receive World Bank aid, water rates to poor families more than doubled, while water quality dropped. Bechtel, the corporation that took over management of Bolivia’s water when it was privatized, sought to increase profits and cut off supplies to those who could not afford them. A popular rebellion ensued.
Privatizations in developing countries, while instituted nominally to increase access to safe drinking water, have led to similar cutoffs for the poor elsewhere in the world, forcing more people to drink from polluted rivers or face prohibitively long hikes in search of water daily. At the last estimate, more than one in six people lacked access to safe drinking water, according to unwater.org. Faced with the choice, many drink the polluted water, which has been linked to as many as 4,500 children’s deaths daily. In a world where 97 percent of all the water on earth is salt water and 2 percent is locked in glaciers, leaving only 1 percent as readily accessible, potable water, issues surrounding this resource take on a stark new meaning worldwide. Consider that in developing countries, 70 percent of industrial pollution is dumped into rivers without first being treated, and 54 percent of organic pollution stems from agricultural runoff, according to the World Water Assessment Programme.
The complexity of water issues is staggering, especially when each community is faced with a unique set of challenges. For many communities water scarcity is not an issue, for others, it is a life or death situation. For the world, we must remember that water may be a globally renewable resource, but at the rate we are polluting our rivers and overdrawing our groundwater, it’s a locally nonrenewable resource too.
In the week and a half before World Water Day, and as we enter BC Green Week, I ask that you think about how you consume water in relation to others. What changes could you make to live on five to 11 gallons a day rather than the 40 the average American consumes? If you dare, imagine what it would be like to live on 2.5 gallons a day, and see if you can’t find a way to be in solidarity with those who deserve the right to far more.
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