Bottlemania - Elizabeth Royte [6]
Why would water arouse such ire in a place that has so much of it? Water wars have long been a staple of the arid West, where big dams impound the stuff, agriculture sucks up the lion’s share, and secondary users scramble for what’s left. For more than fifty years, prognosticators have predicted that Western rivers and aquifers would shrivel, and Westerners would soon be importing water from distant regions. In Maine, by contrast, dams are coming down to restore stream flow and salmon runs. Timber companies, landowners, and, more recently, conservation groups have protected millions of acres of forests in the upper watersheds. The state recently suffered a year of drought, but no one went thirsty. Maine doesn’t have an enormous amount of rainfall, but it does have, in certain places, the sort of geology and forested watersheds that produce exceptionally pure water.
The hydrogeological facts combined with weak groundwater rules have made Fryeburg a perfect example of water’s shift from a public good to an economic force. And it raises some thorny questions: Is it right to trade water at all, to move it from its home watershed to other states, or even countries? Should the taxpayers who protect land and water share the profits of those who pump and sell that resource? How is water different from such resources as oil, trees, or lobsters? The world population is growing rapidly, and fresh, drinkable water, most of which is stored in underground aquifers, is growing scarce. Groundwater pumping has already dried up rivers in Massachusetts, Florida, and other states. According to Robert Glennon, author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters, “The United States is heading toward a water scarcity crisis: our current water use practices are unsustainable, and environmental factors threaten a water supply heavily burdened by increased demand.”
So it goes, the world over. We may be the water planet, Blue Earth, but most of our water is salty; only 3 percent is fresh, and of that fraction only a third is available for human use. The rest is locked up in snowcaps and ice fields. Today, more than a billion people lack sufficient access to safe water. The United Nations projects that by 2025, increases in population and pollution, combined with drought and the reduced recharge of groundwater, will leave two out of three people in similarly dire straits. Those two out of three won’t just be thirsty: already, some 5.1 million people a year die from waterborne diseases, many of which stem from lack of sanitation and its resulting water pollution. That number is going to spike.
Already, parts of Australia and the Middle East are running out of water; Mexico City is sinking as overpumping depletes its aquifer; 80 percent of surface waters in China and 75 percent in India are polluted beyond use. Here in the United States, the EPA projects that thirty-six states will experience water shortages by 2013. The Southeast and the Southwest are in severe drought now; New Mexico has a ten-year supply of water; Arizona is already importing much of what it drinks. It stands to reason that the waters of Maine and other water-rich states will become ever more valuable. The prospect thrills those who own land atop pristine aquifers, but it terrifies many others.
Because water is so important to life—and commerce—it’s been a cause of conflicts and a source of power since before the written word. (The word rival is from the Latin rivalis, meaning “one using the same stream as another.”) The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Assyrians used water as a military tool and target, poisoning wells and destroying irrigation canals; through the 1870s, ranchers, farmers, and villagers in the desert of Southwest America fought violently over water rights; water shortages lie behind much of today’s conflict in Darfur, though the recent discovery of an ancient underground lake in the region is expected to ease the misery. Meeting water needs and demands, says the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that keeps a thirty-one-page