Is the American Southwest Running Dry?

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted January 23, 2009.

Twisting through seven states before reaching Mexico, the Colorado River is the lifeline of the American Southwest. But with increasing population, thoughtless development and the added pressures of climate change, the river -- and the region -- are in dire straights.

In the documentary The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?, filmmaker Jim Thebaut looks at the state of the Southwest's water and if there will be enough to go around. He examines stressed water sources like the Colorado River, the Rio Grande and the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system in California, as well as Lake Powell, which straddles Utah and Arizona on the Colorado River, and Lake Mead, also on the Colorado, between Nevada and Arizona.

With interviews from policymakers, congressional members, scientists and water experts, Thebaut issues a wake-up call for not just the Southwest, but the whole country. The film takes a critical eye to cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Palm Springs, Calif. There is also a special focus on Native American communities, which are particularly hard hit by our country's poor water management and environmental oversight. Lacking political leverage, many Native American communities lack adequate clean, safe drinking water.

The film was inspired by the book, Tapped Out: The Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About It, published by the late Sen. Paul Simon in 1998. And Thebaut attempts to not just paint a grim picture of reality, but to offer some solutions. Thebaut is a veteran filmmaker who produced the film Running Dry about the global water crisis. He has a background in planning and therefore pays close attention to development and the ways in which water policy should be intertwined with our plans for growth.

Thebaut is a strong advocate for a comprehensive national water policy that brings all parties to the table. And he has called the Bush administration's approach to water management "borderline immoral."

Tara Lohan: So what inspired you to do this?

Jim Thebaut: It goes way back. I have a degree in landscape architecture and planning. And for a few years I was a planner in the Northwest, and I used to do environmental impact statements for planning studies. I also used to produce environmental documentaries in Seattle. When I first became aware of Sen. Paul Simon's work and read his book, Tapped Out, it just seemed like a natural for me to put something together. It is an overall project to educate everyone about the global, humanitarian water crises. That's why I've gone about as I have, with two different documentaries and versions of each.

TL: What was one of the most shocking things you learned about water in the Southwest while working on this?

JT: The gravity of the problem. The fact that the Colorado is the lowest level it has ever been, and that chances are there is not going to be enough water to generate energy at the Hoover Dam. The ramifications of that are pretty profound. Just imagine that the water is so low in the Colorado that it cannot support our agriculture community, that it cannot support our energy systems, and just suppose that, like in some developing countries, that water is only available every two or three days. And just imagine there would be communities that will not get any water all. And I'm really worried about the Native American community.

And then the other big deal is our depletion of groundwater. That is the reason I did this documentary. I did Running Dry, which was to alert the world to the global water crisis. But as I was rolling it out across the U.S., I became quickly aware that the American public have an odd way of looking at the rest of the world. They don't relate to it as being part of their world. And when I present the reality that every 15 seconds a child dies from a lack of water or water-related diseases, they always think, "that's over there, it doesn't have anything to do with us."

See more stories tagged with: water, drought, water scarcity, southwest, running dry

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.

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