»The Way Forward

Working With Nature
» For the past hundred years humanity has been on a massive dam building spree. The Army Corps of Engineers counts 82,642 dams in the United States. The World Commission on Dams counts 45,000 large dams (greater than 50 feet tall) worldwide; half the world’s rivers have at least one large dam. Each of those dams dislocates people and cultures, alters water flow and ecosystems disrupts fish migration, displaces native species, contributes to global warming and puts downstream communities at risk.

Sustainable solutions to the problems of water supply, power generation and flood control all exist. They require that we democratize decisions about water use and elevate sustainability as our primary development goal. We must draw on traditional knowledge to work with nature, not try to control it.

Glass Half Full
Talking Water with Sandra Postel

Waterkeeper: Let’s start with the simplest question first; are we running out of water?

Sandra Postel: The short answer is no, because the earth has as much water today as it had at the dawn of human civilization. The real question is how much of that water is accessible and how are we managing and using that accessible supply. I’m concerned that the term ‘water scarcity’ has gotten appropriated by corporations and other private interests who say things like: water is getting scarce, so we need to privatize supplies, build desalination plants and control more water with new infrastructure. They are placing the burden on nature instead of on human stewardship. They are obscuring what is really going on: excessive use and mismanagement of water.

I was one of the people who put the term “water scarcity” on the map 25 years ago, and so I take some responsibility for this. I have begun to reexamine the terminology that I use as I hear the media say things like, ‘Water scarcity is spreading, a billion people don’t have clean water to drink.’ That statistic has more to do with poverty and access than any physical scarcity of water. Typically there is enough water to meet basic needs, but there are no pumps, no wells, no pipes to supply poor people with the water. It’s not a lack of water; it’s a lack of political will.

W: So is it true what Edward Abbey says, that there’s the exact right amount of water?

Postel: That’s right, and since we can’t go back and dismantle Las Vegas and Phoenix and all our desert oasis cities we are going to have to do a fairly significant adaptation. There is some serious rethinking to do about how the human enterprise rebalances itself with the natural water system. The situation in the Southeast this summer and fall was very interesting because you had Atlanta suddenly declaring an emergency and wanting flows from Lake Lanier reduced if not stopped to prevent an even more serious water emergency. Yet water use in Atlanta on a per capita basis is quite high.

W: The reaction in Atlanta from policymakers was scary — proposals to rollback the Endangered Species Act and other environmental protections. How do we avoid “water emergencies”?

Postel: We need to put into place triggers for action that fire much earlier so we never pit drinking water against downstream endangered species. Planning is going to be important because we’re going to have more and more water shortages with climate change.

W: Some water conservation happens through public education, but the kind of problems we’re talking about won’t be solved by people turning off the faucet when they brush their teeth. How do you get people, cities, agriculture and industry to use significantly less water?

Postel: We need regulatory and economic incentives that encourage conservation and efficiency. The current water allocation system in the Western U.S., for example, makes very little economic sense. It is based on the prior appropriation water law, first in time is first in right. It results in a lot of water going to unproductive uses.

Water pricing has a role to play, though to have a significant impact, especially in urban areas, where household water often costs less than cable television, the price increases would have to be quite substantial. It’s possible to use a tiered system that maintains affordable prices for moderate users and sets much higher prices for the biggest users. Incentive programs can also work. Las Vegas is giving rebates to residents who replace green lawns with native plants. If you factor in more efficient irrigation, getting rid of agricultural subsidies and shifting diets away from water-intensive animal products, then you begin to get to a more water-productive food system. If you reduce material consumption and increase water recycling at industrial and manufacturing plants, then you begin to get there on the industrial side.

What we’ve seen so far is only the beginning of a water adaptation that’s going to have to be much greater. My sense is we need a tripling or quadrupling of water productivity across the board — in agriculture, industry and cities — if we’re going to meet human needs while also maintaining a healthy aquatic environment.

W: It seems like water supply problems have
traditionally been solved by engineers backed
by federal coffers.

Postel: Yes, and that has to change and I think that’s beginning to happen. In the 25 years that I’ve been working on this issue the number of local watershed groups has ballooned. There is more interest and involvement, people do want to have a say. But I don’t like to be too hard on engineers because we need them. We’re past the point where we can go back to a natural system. Most of the rivers of the world are turned on and off like plumbing works. The question is, when are we going to turn them on and when are we going to turn them off and for what reasons? What can be done is that you can manage a river with different goals in mind.

Our water management decisions have life and death consequences for other species. We have to be consistent with our values, ethics and technological capabilities. Instead of managing reservoirs only for water supply, irrigation, flood control, hydropower and recreation (the top five reasons we have dams) we can manage them in ways that help the river ecosystem too.

W: What legal mechanisms are out there to drive this shift? Do we need new laws?

Postel: The Clean Water Act gives all the authority we need to do this; we just haven’t fully implemented the law. The goal of the act is to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.” We focus mostly on the chemical piece — pollution. But to maintain the physical and biological integrity requires that we pay attention to a river’s flow regime — the pattern of high and low flows that create the habitat and life cycle conditions to which species in the river are adapted.

States have a lot of authority over water protection and water allocation. Texas just passed an environmental flow law that basically requires enough flow to protect the coastal ecosystems that are important for fisheries, birding and tourism.

One of the biggest missing pieces is a national water policy that requires an allocation of water to protect ecosystem health. The gold standard for this type of policy was included in South Africa’s 1994 post-Apartheid constitution. Their law includes a Water Reserve, guaranteeing every South African the right to the water needed for good health and basic needs. The law also does the same thing for ecosystems. It says that freshwater ecosystems also must receive the quality, quantity and timing of flows they need to remain healthy. These two entitlements come first in water allocation, before irrigation and other uses.

W: The water crisis sounds a lot like pre-Green Revolution concerns about world food supply and overpopulation.

Postel: Yes, in a way it does, and I do believe we need some revolutionary changes in the way we use, manage and think about water. China has very serious water depletion problems. The Yellow River is running dry; groundwater is being overpumped in the North China Plain. In India, it’s estimated that as much as 25 percent of agricultural production is dependant on the overpumping of groundwater. It’s a food bubble. We’re propping up today’s food production with tomorrow’s water. Unless we deal with it head on, at some point the bubble is going to burst and the ramifications will be global.

The solution is to double, triple or quadruple water productivity — do more with every drop of water that’s extracted from the natural environment. It will require a major change in how we use water, but with technology and policy and an ethical underpinning, it is achievable. The adjustment may be difficult, but maybe not. How much happier are we if we have green lawns than if we don’t? We are not accustomed to having to adapt our lifestyle choices to achieve a better balance with nature, but if we did, would we really see our wellbeing decrease? I’m not so sure.