Customer Reviews

Every Drop for Sale: Our Desperate Battle Over Water

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How much would you pay for water to sustain your life? Obviously, you would be willing to pay a lot. That fact concerns Mr. Rothfeder because he fears that water is about to become prohibitively expensive . . . or just not available for more and more of the world's people. As a case in point, Bechtel took over the water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia and raised water prices to the level equal to what the poorest people paid for all of their food. Soon, the town was in revolt, martial law was declared, and events would have only gotten worse if Bolivia had not terminated the contract. If you remember your French history, the end of the monarchy coincided with a period of rapidly rising bread prices.

From there, you will learn that 1.1 billion people each day don't get enough water to drink and to clean themselves and their clothes. Many more don't get enough pure water. No one knows for sure, but it seems like the amount of untreated pure water declines each year while the population grows. If those trends cross, massive water famines will be ahead. Mr. Rothfeder argues for having those in the developed world pay a disproportionately high price for water and use some of that to subsidize making water available to poor people everywhere. A potential benefit of this higher price in the developed world will be to reduce water consumption. An average shower in the United States consumes more water than the poorest people get in water-short areas in two or three days.

The background is discouraging. People are pouring into areas where there isn't enough water to support them (like southern California, Arizona, Atlanta, and Florida). Dam projects make less pure water available, harm wildlife and plants, displace people, and create risk of worse flooding. Draining too much water from areas (like the Owens Valley in California) leaves environmentally devastated areas where toxic wastes from former lake bottoms blow through the high winds harming everyone's health. Almost all of the World Bank money for water projects goes to make just this sort of dam, to create electricity for industry, and steady sources of water for irrigation on large farms.

Recently, companies have been buying up water distribution operations. Often the results, however, aren't very good. Executives may just pay themselves well, raise prices, and ignore quality. The U.K. added regulation (of the sort that we used to have with electricity in the United States) and found the results improved.

Some innovations are more promising. Water is being shipped in bags through the ocean. Desalinization is very expensive, but supplies a lot of the fresh water on the Arabian peninsula. Some harmful dams are being decommissioned. Systems-oriented solutions are being developed in some areas, such as the rehydration of the Everglades in Florida with water that would otherwise go out to sea. Gorbachev's Green Cross has had some successes with helping to broker regional water solutions.

When more water is available, wonderful things can happen. In a village in Kenya, women had to carry 70 pound jugs of water for miles for their families. The men didn't help. Development brought funds for pumps, and water was now only a few feet away. The quality of family life and prosperity of the villagers were much improved . . . for a while. Then thieves stole the pumps one night, and things went back to where they had been.

Overhanging all of this is the potential for regional wars over water. Mr. Rothfeder argues that the Six Day War was primarily triggered by the Arab plan to divert the Jordan River away from Israel. During the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed Kuwait's desalinization plants, Coalition Forces destroyed a lot of Iraq's water infrastructure, and Iraq used water warfare to control southern tribes. More recently, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan have been jockeying to get access to the water that the Kurdish regions in Turkey can supply.

The book is filled with interesting examples that will give you a much better sense of the fresh water situation. Unfortunately, the author's investigation of how to best solve the problem is dealt with in very sketchy terms. Clearly, if substantial funds were available, much more pure water could be provided. The question of who will pay for the poor in developing and underdeveloped countries is the hard question. When former Senator McGovern looked at whether world hunger could be eliminated, he found the cost was a reasonable one for the wealthiest countries to bear and much progress followed. A similar look is needed at making pure water available in the most efficient and effective way for the long-term. Even in the areas where the shortages are the greatest (like the U.S. Southwest) most of the water is still used for agriculture, and very little is paid for that water. So, this issue also requires thinking through price subsidies for agriculture.

Interestingly, Enron (which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy) was cited as one of the leaders in providing more pure water in the future around the world. That reference seemed ironic in light of recent events at the company.

Make part of your sharing with others include making more pure water available! Many charities have programs to help poor villagers install pumps and learn how to maintain them in water-short areas like the drier parts of Africa.

An excellent book on discussing the perils of ignoring the scarcity of water resources...It provides a fairly chilling account of what has potentially gone wrong in water management projects in different parts of the world. The book also discusses the use of water as a potential war/bargaining tool as discussed in the context of an early Arab plan to divert the Jordan River from Israel and Turkey/Syria skirmishes related to Kurdish unrest in that region. After reading those segments, one cant help but wonder why these issues are not discussed with more sense of urgency.

Though the book provides some interesting "facts and figures", most of its arguments is based on author's own intrepretation and not much independent confirmations. Some of the arguments degenerate to what can be percieved as political agenda, while some of the arguments, ironically, doesnt hold any water. The author does deserve credit for the well thought thesis and discussion on the premises..The arguments on "why" and "what" went wrong could have risen above personal opinion/speculation...

The narration is interesting, and the author spices the discussion with some character sketches..A good read, but will be disappointed if you are looking for the book to live up to the hype its title could convey...

I was prepared to like this book and be convinced of its premise, but was sorely disappointed. It is mostly undocumented and seems to reflect only the author's opinion.
I call it a "colorful" read since the writing consists of yellow journalism, purple prose, and white lies.

I compared it most unfavorably with "A River Lost" a wonderfully researched and well written book on the Columbia River. Mr. Rothfeder simply pushes his own ideas and bends the facts to fit his views.

The reviews below are pretty evenly divided, so I'll seek an even keel here.

On the good side, Rothfeder has delivered a readable, conveniently short survey of the worldwide water crisis. Some have taken him to task for not filling this slim volume with statistics and other empirical data, but Rothfeder is a popular journalist, not an academic. He did not set such a heavy task. The book is designed as an introduction to a seeping and almost invisibly rising environmental dilemma for a general readership impatient with scientific jargon.

That said, its generalities do fall too easily into pop sociology. His description of the rise of water civilization are rationalizations for capitalist and military expansion: nations acquire water rights as fruits of buying or seizing it from others, thus creating wealth, and ruining neighbors. This kind of predatory behavior may seem natural as rain to him - Rothfeder is also a prolific media propagandist for corporate America - but it is not the real history of man's relationship to water.

Communities develop for the most natural reasons of survival around water sources. These sources in turn determine community growth and development over generations. They do give a natural advantage to other less-blessed region, which may then be unfairly turned against the disadvantaged.

He's right in showing how corporate abuse in wealthy countries is not only profiting off shortages elsewhere, but adding insult to injury in buying local water and selling it back to local consumers. His remedy, though, is further privatization, which in real terms means even further corporate control. He disparages "local government" as being too undercapitalized for effective water management, putting him against other "water warriors" like Vandana Shiva, who makes very strong arguments for local control. The most obvious solution - nationalization - is completely off his radar; while his idea of "stronger regulation" is utopian, as corporate power easily subverts this.

The book has flaws, but mostly in Rothfeder's blinkered endorsement of private corporate power as solution rather than problem. As a general survey of the environmental crisis looming just offshore of tomorrow it's a good summary job.

Beginning with "Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water" in 1986, many books have been written detailing various blood-boiling aspects of the gross mismanagement of the world's water resources. Most were written as polemics, and justifiably so.

Here in "Every Drop for Sale", author Jeffrey Rothfeder treats the subject using more temperate language. But, given the facts, the reader's reaction is still likely to be one of outrage. It is testament to the author's skill that he is able to raise the alarm while remaining objective and clear-sighted about both progress and possible solutions.

The book ranges widely over the effects of the proliferation of dams, diversions, reservoirs, irrigation projects, privatizations, and subsidizations. As Rothfeder guides us through Rapid City (Iowa), the Narmada River in India, the ill-fated village of Cochabamba in Bolivia, and many other water mismanagement sites, he proves to be an effective and moving chronicler. The power of his book lies in his ability to combine a big picture view with attention to the lives of the powerless who happen to be downstream from some megalomaniac water project.

Cochabamba proves to be both the most arresting and yet ironically one of the more promising of Rothfeder's accounts. Townspeople were first subjected to the loss of their major industry, tin mining. That loss of local revenue then led to the deterioration of their water distribution system. The Bolivian government tried to rescue the situation by privatizing the town's water management out to Bechtel, which promptly raised water fees. Something approaching civil war resulted. Instead of simply bemoaning the path taken, Rothfeder sees in the eventual outcome (after destruction, arrests, and deaths, the government cancelled its deal with Bechtel) both a salutary object lesson and a hope that, with a newly recognized need for safeguards, privatization can in fact be a critical part of addressing the world's accelerating water crisis.

Giving validity to this optimistic outlook, the author concludes that same chapter with a look at how the Blair government turned the UK's privatization efforts, begun disastrously under Margaret Thatcher, into a successful model for the rest for the world. (He characterizes that program as one "strictly overseeing the free water market, while leaving it sufficiently unrestricted that profit incentives will motivate private corporations".) This juxtaposition of stories is characteristic of the book's effective pivot around both problems and ideas for resolution.

Rothfeder argues that the commoditization of water and its corollary, the privatization of water management, are not only inevitable but also that they can be turned to advantage. This is debatable; but he puts forward a compelling case for his belief that both are so.

The standard author's blurb describes Rothfeder as an author and "consulting editor". In the course of the book, he reveals that he came to his water sensitivity while touring as a rock musician. We're fortunate that his itinerary took him to Rapid City. The book is not lengthy, but feels comprehensive, well-informed, and persuasive. We need works like "Cadillac Desert" to fire our indignation at how we got into this fix, but we need "Every Drop for Sale" to remind us that all is not yet lost.

very few statistics or physical information cited.

Instead, author constantly uses turns of phrase like "drastically reduced flow" or "substantially curbed drinking supply" while providing little of the numbers which should come rushing forth to defend his premise.

I checked this book out from the library expecting compelling documentation of the perils of water privatization, instead the book is a meandering attempt at a poetic defense of the public claim to water- a message with which I agree but for I find little justification in this book. It does contain a number of at least entertaining anecdotes and some worthwhile philosophizing on the problem of over-development, it might serve as a good general introduction to the genre of books bashing corporate and private malefeasance, and therefore make okay reading on a plane, as it's not very demanding reading.

Another mind blowing expose on the highs and lows of the global water supply, from acclaimed journalist Jeff Rothfeder, whose candid style and probing research will hold your interest and keep you begging for more. This chilling account of the world's pending water crisis is guaranteed to change the way we perceive the life and death importance of H2O in the coming years. You won't be able to put it down.

This is an hysterical title, but nevertheless offers a good overview of the methods by which potable water makes it to where the people are. We should always remember the wise words of Sam Kinison about living in the desert. Of course, when he said that, he was a resident of Los Angeles.

According to this author, desalination is no cheaper than delivery by floating bags. Apparently he hasn't got up to date info from the eastern Mediterranean. Desalination (many methods are available, as he notes) is the way of the future.

The biggest problem area in water distribution is the use of open canals in hot, dry areas. Most significantly, Los Angeles gets its water supply that way, and Egypt is losing arable land every year in part because of a failure to arrest evaporation losses.

The Med-Dead project (to bring water from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea, as a way to supply Jordan; instead, Jordan wants a canal from Aqaba, along the Saudi-Israeli border for political and military reasons) and the Med-Qattara project will probably never materialize for economic reasons.

The Aral Sea basin was devastated by Soviet land use and water use practices, making the contested valley along the Afghan border significant to the world at large.

The Kuwaitis and Iranians are building a way (Japanese contractor I believe) to move water from western Iran to oil-wealthy Kuwait, via a pipeline under the Persian Gulf. The Turks intend to build an anchored pipeline from a hydro project to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (the Turkish enclave of Cyprus, an independent nation recognized only by Turkey). If brought to fruition, each of these projects will have political and military significance.

The hysteria of the title is a bit much precisely because water doesn't go away; no matter how tainted, it can be filtered and reused. The world is people, and people aren't short of water. Agricultural irrigation uses something like ten times as much water as other uses, but requires less treatment. Obviously we need agriculture, and the other uses can be easily satisfied using current sources merely by cheap methods of conservation.