|
Forget cloud seeding. Forget building more dams. Forget piping Great Lakes water to the Southwest. Figure out how to save most of the 6 billion or so gallons of drinking water-quality water that Americans flush down their toilets each day. And, most important of all, put a price on water that reflects its importance and will persuade individuals and businesses to buy and sell the right to use water.
 |
|
| Robert Glennon and Deborah Swackhamer |
|
That was the message author Robert Glennon delivered to about 250 people who attended his lecture Feb. 22 at the University of Minnesota.
Glennon, whose most recent book is Unquenchable: America's Water crisis and What to Do About It, delivered a lecture sponsored by the Freshwater Society and the university's College of Biological Sciences.
His talk was the first in what will be a four-part lecture series - the Moos Family Speaker Series - that is part of 2010 - The Year of Water, a yearlong celebration of water organized by the Freshwater Society.
To view a video of Glennon's presentation, click here. To read an interview with Glennon from the Freshwater newsletter, click here. To view a panel discussion featuring Glennon and three Minnesota water experts, click here. To view a KARE TV interview with Glennon, click here. And to read a Minnesota Daily report on his lecture, click here.
The panelists appearing with Glennon were: Sherry Enzler, a University of Minnesota research fellow; James Stark, director of the U.S. Geological Survey's Minnesota Water Center; and Deborah Swackhamer, co-director of the university's Water Resources Center. Robert Elde, dean of the College of Biological Sciences, moderated the discussion.
Glennon, a University of Arizona professor of law and public policy, also wrote an earlier book about water policy in the United States. It is titled Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters.
In his lecture and in the panel discussion, Glennon repeatedly said that a number of regions in the U.S. already are experiencing a water crisis. He cited evidence of Atlanta nearly running out of water in 2007, the big decline in the water level of Lake Superior that same year and examples from around the country of businesses closing and power plants not being built because of water shortages.
"This is about the health of the American economy," Glennon said. "We may fret about running out of oil, but water lubricates the economy just as oil does."
Glennon cited Tucson, where he lives, and Las Vegas as examples of cities that have invested in two sets of plumbing in major developments to capture and re-use water that, otherwise, would be wasted. "It's a source that grows as the population grows," he said of water re-use.
A modest amount of water - for drinking, cleaning and cooking -- should be considered a basic human right and should be available at little cost to everyone, Glennon said. But he repeatedly called for a change in current water pricing standards that allow most individuals, farms and businesses to obtain almost any amount of water they want for only the cost of pumping and treating it.
"We Americans are spoiled," he said. "We wake up in the morning, we turn on the tap and out comes as much as we want for less than we pay for a cell phone or cable television."
He said most Americans have no idea how much their water bills are, and that is a sign the bills are too low to encourage conservation.
Glennon said there is a huge, often-underestimated, connection between water use and energy production. He questioned the economics of ethanol production, especially in areas where corn has to be irrigated to produce the fuel. But he said some planned solar energy projects in the Southwest also could use vast quantities of scarce water for cooling.
Glennon cautioned against thinking that high-tech solutions - desalination, cloud seeding or new dams - will make water available for a continually growing population. And he said that, despite proposals to pipe Great Lakes water to arid regions, water is too heavy and too cheap to make that a realistic possibility.
Conservation, especially in the use of waters by toilets, can help solve the crisis, he said. But he said the solution to the water crisis is likely to come from greater government regulation of water and from a market approach that would allow water currently consumed in low-value uses, especially agriculture, to be sold for use by enterprises that produce more revenue and more jobs.
"I want you to pay for water," Glennon told the audience. "It's about time." |
