That line from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” does not suggest the capriciousness of the rainfall. When I addressed the problem of water last August we were locked in a drought. Now, just in the month of January, we had 7.21 inches of rain; that’s about 18% of our annual precipitation. Feast or famine would seem to be the appropriate word for wet weather.
This raises an interesting question: Is there more or less water in the world than a million years ago? I doubt if it has changed one way or the other, but there certainly is a distribution problem. The density of population centers has outstripped the water supply to the point that an estimated 40% of the world’s population does not have safe drinking water. This leads to enormous problems in water-borne diseases about which we know nothing in North America. Our problems have to do with livestock and crops on which we, as well as much of the world, depend.
We are told that the Colorado River supplies more than 40 million people in the southwest with water and hydroelectric power. The water required for the area is so great that the river usually runs dry before it ever empties in the Gulf of California.
There are river systems that are much greater than the Colorado. The Missouri is the second longest river in the country. A mile wide and an inch deep as it has been described by early explorers, it’s the watershed for more than a half million square miles, much of which is sparsely populated before it joins its great partner, the Mississippi, north of St. Louis. Ol’ Man River is the watershed for 31 states between the Appalachians and the Rockies.
We are subject to massive flooding each spring from these systems and as it runs into the sea, it carries top soil beyond calculation. Why can’t we salvage that water in containment facilities, and then distribute it to where it’s needed? Why can’t we have an Interstate Water System that transports water to areas of concern? It could control flood waters and divert them to drought-stricken areas. The construction of such a system would take years to build and be a boon to employment across the country for decades.
I’m uncertain when the bottled water bonanza hit us, but it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Now you can get vitamin-enriched and flavored water for a mere dollar a bottle. I recently heard a physician say he would only drink bottled water because of the pharmaceuticals that are in tap water. Questioned about it, he noted that much of the drugs we take are excreted and find their way into the water supply, hence his predilection for the bottled product. Another physician friend who never accepts statements without proof did some research and discovered that if you drank two quarts of tap water a day, it would take four years to consume a single dose of a pill.
I am astounded at the success of the bottled water business particularly when considering how much of the world has no safe supply. The World Health Organization estimates that 6,000 people, mainly children, die every day from drinking unsafe water.
In Holland, Vestergaard Frendsen developed a filter system called the Life Straw. It cost $2.00 to make and will process 700 liters of water, enough for a year’s consumption by one person. It has been widely used in Central Africa. In addition to saving lives by the tens of thousands think of the increased productivity of those who do not have to miss work many times a month because of water-borne illness. The Life Straw obviates the need for boiling water so it reduces greenhouse gases immeasurably.
It makes economic and moral sense to address this problem. As Will Rogers famously said, “Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it. We can do something about the effect of mal-distribution of water. It just takes political will and, unfortunately, we know where most of those powers are concentrated.
Hayden Hollingsworth
