Is the American Southwest Running Dry?

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

So, my goal was to bring the crises home to everyone's front doorstep.

TL: Do you think folks are starting to get it?

JT: Well, it depends on the community. People are so overwhelmed by crises. We are in the midst of this horrifying economic crisis, we got people losing their houses and their jobs. It is hard to grasp the reality of some other crises coming down the path. There has been a lot of media, but we need to educate the body politic, educate public policymakers. They've been somewhat receptive. But we've got to keep the hammer down.

TL: In the film, you interview a lot of politicians. Who are the best at taking on this issue?

JT: All folks in the film are receptive. And mostly all of them are the Southwest, except (Rep. Edward J.) Markey, D-Mass., who is also acutely aware. (Sen. Jeff) Bingaman, D-N.M., and (Sen. and our next Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar, D-Colo., and (Sen. Jon) Kyl R-Ariz., were all former attorneys general and water lawyers, so they are also able to provide a lot of insight into the issue.

Another one is (Rep. Mary) Bono Mack, R-Calif., in Palm Springs where there are global-warming issues that will affect that area, and she is very aware of that. All those people, I think are all aware and have a level of expertise. They all said the same thing, whether Republican or Democrat, it transcends political ideology, it is a people issue.

TL: Are any of them making any effort to combat this with legislation?

JT: There are some efforts with legislation. I just wrote a paper with Dr. Eric Webb, who now works at Sandia National Labs. We have 20 agencies in the federal government that all deal with water. So essentially, our shots are being scattered. We thought it was important to have a central office under the White House to deal with these issues -- something that would be under the office of Counsel of Environment Quality.

The past administration has been beyond negligent -- borderline immoral in that they haven't addressed these issues. We have infrastructure problems. We lose 40 percent of our water in some of our major cities because the infrastructure is 100 years old.

Being an environmental planner, I'm a land-use person, and I think we need a paradigm shift in the way we live our lives and plan our communities.

TL : As a planner, does looking at the way Southwest communities are growing make you crazy?

JT: We do have uncontrolled growth, but it's not just in the Southwest.

Is Seattle making the same mistakes L.A. is making? I produced my first documentary called the Tale of Two Cities, which looked at L.A. and Seattle. And Seattle is, actually, making many of the same mistakes. I think there has been some growth management in the Northwest, it is a different ethic. But I worry about uncontrolled growth and sprawl. The other thing, is that we just hit 300 million people, we are getting big. It is projected that by the middle of this century we will be well over 400 million, and much is projected for the Southwest. We need to plan how to deal with this incredible growth so that we don't compromise the integrity of the environment.

We have to be smart and creative and elect people who get it and have an ethic around water issues.

TL: What are the solutions?

JT: There are so many issues -- every region needs to be self-sufficient. I'm an advocate for reuse but that takes a lot of education. We need to look at the whole issue of public good versus private land ownership. We can't continue to allow people to be able to just mine groundwater. We need education. We need to educate citizens on the gravity of the problem.

We need to look at land-use planning and how we are going to build in the future. The days are over for sprawling everywhere. When we are building, we need to be thinking about how we build and the kinds of materials. And water is so tied into energy. We need more conservation. Conservation is good economics. We need to look at technology and look at alternative energy systems. I think we need to go into areas of solar and wind and new, creative kinds of approaches.

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Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.

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