Customer Reviews

Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are no shortage of crisis situations facing our world, yet nothing seems so elemental as water. It is such an integral part of our daily existence that it can be hard to understand how deep our dependence on water really is. That we need to drink water is understandable, but that it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef will make you look at that quarter pounder a bit differently.

Of course, concern about water is as ancient as life itself. In the United States water disputes have influenced settlements and governance, as any good Western movie will show you. More recently we've dealt with acid rain, but with the plethora of water bottles showing up on store shelves, do we really have a water crisis?

Robert Glennon's well laid out argument first establishes that there is a crisis and then offers suggestions on how to address it. The argument that there is a water crisis is becoming easier to make, in no small part thanks to Glennon's ongoing work in this area. Major media outlets are also now pointing out that the concern for water is not just an issue for other parts of the world, but the United States as well.

Glennon's strengths in this book are many. First, he lays out the arguments by telling stories and backing them up with facts. We not only see numbers, but more importantly we see the people impacted by the numbers. Glennon understands that this is not simply an environmental issue, but a human issue. Plus, he is not interested in browbeating naysayers into submission; he clearly wants to attract people to his way of thinking. While he does not suffer fools kindly, he assumes the reader is an intelligent person with an interest in understanding the issue at hand.

Second, Glennon is well organized in his presentation, something many people passionate about a subject forget to consider. He breaks the book into three sections ("The Crisis," "Real and Surreal Solutions," and "A New Approach") and he keeps them separate. When presenting the information he lets the data speak for itself, sometimes showing his hand toward the end, at other times leaving the reader to their own conclusions.

Third, Glennon knows that rational people can disagree. He refuses to demonize those he may disagree with, instead looking at their arguments and refuting as he sees fit. Several times throughout the book he acknowledges that there is no easy solution to a problem and that two opposing views both carry valid arguments. In other words, this is a scientist who understands in reality we do not have all the answers. He also does not expect everyone to adopt an extreme point of view and shows himself as a passionate, if not radical, water enthusiast. Toward the end of the book he notes his mother-in-law takes "navy showers" (get wet, turn the water off and soap up, and turn the water back on to rinse) -- he prefers the more wasteful but also more pleasant full shower treatment.

Finally, one of Glennon's surprising strengths is his sense of humor. While he never loses sight of the seriousness of his topic, he can rarely resist a good laugh; as a reader it is surprising to find yourself laughing at a "heavy" book. When discussing the race for a more powerful show head (with costs hitting $6,000) he cannot resist noting that Kohler, although their ad features a product with seven heads of water, "none...get the female catalog model's hair wet" (40).

His ideas for solving the water crisis are intentionally wide ranging. Sure, he wants you to turn of the water when brushing your teeth, but he also wants to talk about pricing models, buying water rights, using government incentives, and stimulating alternative waste technologies, just to mention a few. In other words, we cannot solve the water crisis by simply taking shorter showers, but it is a start. Glennon offers input to Congress and local and state governments, and offers a website for the reader to get water-saving tips ([...])

As his subtitle implies, this is a book about the water crisis in the U.S., not the world. To see him apply this thinking to worldwide issues in water would be equally helpful, but this book is simply not that place. Instead, we get a well reasoned presentation of an issue with clear and reasonable ideas on how to address the problems, all with a well written and humorous style, which make this a must read.

Glennon gives a very clear and thorough description of the state of freshwater in the U.S. Written extremely well, with illuminating and thought-provoking stories explaining what is happening in Las Vegas, Atlanta, and across the country. Glennon tells a great nonfiction story which explains the complexities of what is happening in the country, and why people who aren't yet worried about freshwater should be.

This was an excellent follow-up to Water Follies. From droughts in the "wet" East to the excessive use of the Southwest, the author gives a good wake up call that water issues are everywhere. Glennon emphasizes the important ways of avoiding an American water crisis, such as finding new sources and conservation. I especially liked to see a chapter devoted to rainwater harvesting. I recommend that you read this book, but more importantly that you tell others about their water. The word needs to be spread to the public so that they know more about water beyond the tap.

Before reading this book, I had some familiarity with America's water crisis, but I was still surprised by its extent and urgency as presented by Robert Glennon. He covers all parts of the country, and all sectors of activity from residential to agricultural to a variety of industries. He also enlightens us on the sorry state of aquifers, water distribution, and water treatment. And he does all of this with an appreciation for the cross-cutting effects of water problems on a range of societal needs and individual behaviors.
Glennon discusses an assortment of near-term and long-term solutions. The urgency of the problem leads him, in my opinion, to underemphasize some long-term efforts, particularly a dramatic expansion of desalination. Nonetheless, it's refreshing that the author presents some thoughtful solutions rather than just wringing his hands about the problems.
Glennon's writing is well-researched, and numerous photos and maps help clarify the text. His style is enjoyable, which helps the reader get through the rather depressing message. A must-read for those who care about finding solutions to problems of national scope.

Glennon begins by reporting that Las Vegas has exhausted its rights to Colorado River water. The city's per capita water consumption (350 gallons/day) is 2x that of New York City, which also gets 10X the rainfall of Las Vegas. Outdoor water use accounts for 70% of Las Vegas' usage. The average household uses 17,000 gallons/summer month, paying only $37 (one cent/5 gallons). Las Vegas has, however, cut water demand by 18 billion gallons/year, even as population grew 330,000.

The Strip uses only 3% of the city's water. Dual plumbing recaptures water from sinks and showers that is then used for its famous outside attractions at some major hotels. Hotel shower aerators save 6,000 gallons water/year, on-demand water heaters, and drip irrigation are also used. The Bellagio (3,9993 rooms) uses less water than the former golf course located at that site.

All interesting material, especially for one familiar with Las Vegas - but it lacks connection to the rest of the book. Similarly, the rest of the book contains a number of interesting tidbits (The new Waveyard in Mesa, AZ. uses 60-100 million gallons/year to replace water lost to evaporation; similarly, man-made lakes are a major unnecessary source of evaporation loss; the Salton Sea is about 214 feet below sea level, with a salinity level about 50% higher than the Pacific Ocean, and rising; eliminating the plastic in bottled water offers the equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road). However, these tidbits lead nowhere in terms of creating an overall strategy.

Readers do learn, however, that farming is the major use of water in the U.S., while providing much less contribution to GDP. (The latter is misleading because without farming, there would be no GDP. Further, Glennon considerably overstates the productivity of American farming when he leaves federal subsidies out of his calculations.) Regardless, Glennon doesn't follow up with suggestions for significantly improving farming's use of water.

The Las Vegas segment did reference an interesting alternative - building a pipeline from the Mississippi River to Nebraska to recharge the rapidly declining Ogallala aquifer that is critical to mid-West farming. A brief statement claims this was not feasible, but didn't elaborate why. I'm hoping that ideas such as that offer significant improvement in our water supply.

I was torn between a four and a five and came down on the side of five because this is a real book with real facts and real interviews and it covers a vital topic very ably. I was tempted to drop to a four for two reasons: this book desperately lacks visualization, something publishers are going to have to learn to integrate if they want to survive (see the TED Briefing "Data is the New Dirt" by David McCandless); and because this book is part of a twelve-book read and review series started for UNESCO, I don't see all the solutions well represented at the end--the book ends weakly. Still, it is a vitally serious, desperately serious book, a sequel to the author's Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping And The Fate Of America's Fresh Waters, and should be read with When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century and The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink.

At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog you can do what Amazon does not provide for: see all of my reviews on all books on water with one click, and explore my integrative summative reviews of non-fiction books and DVDs in 97 other categories.

Published in 2009, this is a current book that should be completely redone with proper visualizations including state by state visualizations and accompanying data sets, and then issued in paperback along with lists of "who to call" state by state.

The author impresses me greatly with his mix of detailed facts and face to face interviews woven into a story, but it is not an easy story to follow and time, space, water reality just does not come across in plain text.

Notes that stayed with me:

+ Las Vegas is the icon of irresponsible behavior and ran out of water in 2001
+ Hoover Dam made Las Vegas possible, built by the Mob after gambling legalized for the dam workers
+ Today Las Vegas spends $1 million per hotel room in total construction and service costs to create
+ $2 billion pipeline is planned from the Mississippi, this is an example of money over thinking

+ Hotels use only 3% of the Las Vegas water--this was an eye opener for me. The hotels and casinos have been totally responsible, have understood the crisis, thrown money at it, and represent state of the art water recycling and gray water utilization as well as water conservation.

Observation: If Las Vegas truly runs out of water one day and the USG Government chooses to bail it out at our expense, it will be ten to a hundred times more costly than the Wall Street bailout. It's time we reestablished public control over the public purse.

QUOTE (17): Water lubricates the American economy just as oil does. It is intimately linked to energy because it takes water to make energy and it takes energy to divert, pump, move, and cleanse water. Water plays a critical role in virtually every segment of the economy, from heavy industry to food production, from making semiconductors to providing Internet service. A prosperous future depends on a secure and reliable [and clean] water supply. And we don't have it. To be sure, water still flows from taps, but we're draining our reserves like gamblers at a crap table.

+ Droughts are a threat to URBAN areas, I really appreciated the insights in this section
+ Private wells are not understood or monitored, they are consuming a lot and also have chloride & other concentrations

Much of the book covers ground I have walked in other books. For the US audience, I would certainly recommend this book and the others above. For the international audience, I recommend instead, in this order:
The Atlas of Water, Second Edition: Mapping the World's Most Critical Resource
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water
Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit

As a general observation, although the author scared me at first with his advocate of placing an economic value on water, in the end he proves to be an advocate of a REGULATED marketplace, not a "free" market where costs can be externalized to the public. Of course this requires public intelligence in the public interest, something that does not exist today in structured reliable form.

+ People simply do not know where their water is coming from
+ Rivers have massive amounts of sewage effluent, mercury from power plants, and concentrated contamination on the river bed from past era
+ Mixing storm and sewage in one infrastructure was a HUGE mistake that needs to be rectified
+ Pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers are into the water so fast, the public has no clue, government is not serious

Despite my four pages of notes I found the Solutions portion of the book disappointing but still valuable.

+ Business as usual is still in vogue
+ No one has inventoried dried up rivers and springs--simply not documented
+ Dams don't add water, they just redirect it
+ Federal government is out of money, municipal bonds are a hard sell
+ Shocking number of dams still being proposed today
+ Dam removal is WORKING, restoring ecology and especially fish
+ Legal rules have not kept pace with technology
+ One quarter of US water supply comes from pumping groundwater
+ Rights of USE IN COMMON versus rights of EXCLUSIVE OWNERSHIP are two different things
+ Everyone talking about "moving" large amounts of water artificially is generally ignorant or unethical
+ Cloud seeding does not work
+ On desalination does not fully address the toxic outputs
+ Water requires complex engineering, we are not there [I am reminded of my friend Chuck Spinney's comment on how national "defense" has spawned an entire generation of engineers who know only "government spec, cost plus" engineereing, which is to say, very bad engineering. His book, Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch applies to every aspect of our national domestic and global policies--Washington is out of touch with realities, the Governors are in denial.
+ Drugs in water are miniscule but mixed--the science is not there

GIVING AWAY CONSERVATION TOILETS IS BOTH THE CHEAPEST AND THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF CONSERVING WATER.

Intel is a case study in understanding and addressing the problem, the author partially addresses my concerns over computer toxicity (see for example, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health.

Water rights and water pricing are an emerging area of study and not yet in the policy and legal arena in proper form. I am impressed by the author's depiction of how developers WILL pay for water rights as part of the deal, it just has to be decumented and presented.

QUOTE (251): For privatization to be successful, governments must regulate water as a social good, ensuring access to all. PUCs must carefully monitor the financial returns to the private company and link any rate increases to agreed-upon improvements in service, conservation programs, or environmental stewardship. ... In any event, government should retain ownership of the water resources.

I buy in to the author's views that only by charging for water can we press forward in modernizing archaic infrastructure including farming infrastructure where cheap water has incentivized the life extention of very leaky inadequate water routing systems. Farmers still use 70-80% of the water in any given state, but at the same time, their share of the food dollar has dropped from 40 cents to 20 cents. My own observation: we clearly need to do holistic analysis to optimize food growing (not meat growing) in relation to where the water is and how best to keep the water clean--at the same time, and the author documents this brilliantly, we need to understand the "return on investment" that water yields, for example, under $300 for an alfalfa unit and over one million dollars for a computer chip using the same amount of water.

The section on conservation movements and land trusts is impressive and carried the book to a five. I am expecially impressed by the combination of

HYBRID consortiums and

SHARED INFORMATION

J. F. Rischard understood this and articulated it in his book, High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. We have antiquated governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and universities, all nearly brain-dead for having been in the "rote" by regulation mode for so long. INFORMATION IS THE FACILITATOR, HYBRID COALITIONS ARE THE ACTORS.

The author speaks of "an unlikely coalition of farmers, environmentalists, and business interests...." and on closer examination this boils down to persistent informed personalities showing each group, from that group's point of view, the economic, social, and ecologicial advantages in their own terms. PUBLIC INTELLIGENCE LEADS TO SELF-REGULATION THAT IS EFFECTIVE.

QUOTE (303-304): We must break the relentless cycle of overuse by restricting new access to the public resource, by protecting existing users with quantified water rights, by making these water rights transferable, and bvy insisting that new users purchase and retire existing water rights in exchange for permission to place a new demand on the resource.

A truly deep book rich in detail, lacking in visualization. My bottom line is that we have not done our homework. WE have not inventoried the history of water zip code by zip code, we have not quantified and evaluated the return on investment for water use at every location and in relation to every product, and therefore we have no basis for intelligent policy making from the zip code level to the national, regional, and global levels. There is a lot of common sense and professional research in this book--to me as a professional intelligence officer it shouts out: COLLECT, PROCESS, ANALYZE, SHARE. Public intelligence in the public interest--that's the missing link in Water, and in relation to the other eleven core policies itemized by Earth Intelligence Network (Agriculture, Diplomacy, Economy, Education, Energy, Family, Health, Immigration, Justice, Security, Society). See the strategic analytic model--and the impact of CORRUPTION on all matters, at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.

A solid five, needs more work, and a follow on book that visualizes and quantifies and compares, state by state, district by district.

I saw Robert Glennon speak at a conference recently, which motivated me to go buy his book and read it. This is a hefty book filled with example after example of water issues. Glennon describes the whole spectrum, from what you do in your bathroom to how it affects energy and agriculture. Glennon is a Tuscon native so his familiarity with water issues is personal and professional. It is a US-centric book so it does not offer much descriptions of other water issues. For example, much of the African continent and parts of southern China will be subject to major water challenges, but there isn't much info on them in the book.

Glennon's solution is that water should be more expensive. This isn't quite a price-fixing or cap and trade solution. Water is a little different than gasoline or CO2 emissions. In some areas, he shows how development contracts depend on the acquisiton of water rights from either retired or unused water rights in the area, which prevents over development without regard to water planning. This method seems to be effective, and it indirectly attaches a price to water. Since a developer must acquire water rights from someone else in order to build, some developers are willing to negotiate substantial prices with water sellers. This is kind of like a liquor license model, where the # of licenses are limited to an area.

While it is evident that we pay way too little for water in this nation, and that there is often little correlation between energy or civil infrastructure and water infrastructure during the planning phase, Glennon's solution will have opponents. But he's right - we pay too little and something needs to be done about it. While I don't like the idea of someone deciding how much to gouge me, I do like the idea of intelligent water management based on the estimated supply for a region. I took a shower this morning and thought about all that water running down the drain while I waited for it to warm up. My house (like most houses) doesn't have a gray water capture system. How many gallons could I save? My water bill is cheap enough that I don't think much about it. But as I watched those gallons swirl down the drain as I often do, I imagined that each of them cost $1. If that were the case, I probably would have wasted $10. I would be sure to implement water saving measures if the price on water was higher.

Before I read Glennon's book I had been entertaining the idea of rain barrels. After I finished the book, I was determined to get them. We just tilled the garden, and the idea of irrigating that garden with harvested rain water now seems like a very logical and practical thing to do, rather than sitting there spraying treated, drinkable water through a hose while I sip a beer made from treated municipal water. As Glennon aptly describes, we can make some changes.

Glennon has a compelling writing style that makes me wish he had been my professor in college. We think of water shortages as either very local or a western desert problem (why did they build there again?). Glennon brings home that water supply-- access to safe reliable drinking water-- is a national issue, a national problem, and a national victim of short-sighted policy. The healthier our rivers, the healthier our supply-- the more sustainable our use, the more cost-effective it will be. So little of our planet is fresh water, and solutions such as desalination have such high economic and environmental costs (have YOU thought about what happens to the condensed salt that is removed?), we need to focus on how the re-frame our use of freshwater in a way that ensures the present and the future. Glennon presents the issues and the solutions in a way that is accessible to everyone who needs water-- and those who cannot speak up for their own needs who live in the trees, the ground, and the streams around us. This is a terrific follow on to his first book and a more useful read in the ways in which it addresses solutions.

[...].

Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona law professor, has written a second book about water. (I have not read his first, Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters, but I should!)

On first glance, Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It (333 pages) seems like it comes straight out of this blog ("Glennon's answer is a provocative market-based system that values water as a commodity and a fundamental human right."). It turns out that the book does NOT contain a "provocative market-based system." That's good (for me), since I want my book to cover that area. (NB: This review is therefore biased by my own view of what belongs in a book on water economics.)

Fortunately, Glennon's background as a lawyer, years of experience, and heavy research ensures that he approaches the topic from a different angle than I do, and he offers a useful perspective to people who want to learn something about water policy, politics, economics and institutions.

The book is divided into four parts:

1. The Crisis: Glennon ranges far and wide, telling stories of how water is mismanaged. This part is full of stories and details, but it has little analysis (why did things go wrong?) and few solutions (what do we do?).*

2. Real and Surreal Solutions: This section covers the conventional wisdom (e.g., dams, groundwater pumping, etc.) and crank ideas (massive pipelines, cloud seeding, etc.). After saying no to business as usual, Glennon has good chapters on desalination and reclamation, water conservation, harvesting and recycling. But very little discussion of "market-based solutions." :(

3. A New Approach: Glennon examines the state of American infrastructure and condemns conventional solutions. Instead of replacing aging pipes, we should install dual-pipe systems, composting toilets, etc. Page 222 has my favorite quotation:

What we have not attempted in the United States is to encourage water conservation through price signals that create financial incentives to conserve. Quite simply we must raise the price of water.

This chapter and the ones that follow are quite good. Chapter 15 gives a case study of how to manage water rights with an eye towards sustainable development. Chapters 16 (private vs. public) and 17 (ag-urban transfers) are also good, but I was disconcerted by this conclusion (p. 271):

Control over water must remain with the state or with a broadly representative elected body; otherwise, parochial interests may encourage the crude commodification of water without regard to how transfers may harm workers, other businesses, or the environment.

I completely disagree -- and the example Glennon gives (IID is dysfunctional) makes it seem like he contradicts himself within the same chapter. In fact, he says in the next chapter ("The Future of Farming") that farmers will be more efficient with water when they can sell the water they save. The chapter after that gives an example of how farmers in Oregon made a "win-win" deal to sell their water for environmental uses. The chapter that follows gives a good motivation and defense of property rights as a means of ensuring sustainable water use. I am guessing that Glennon's split personality on this topic would come down in favor of trading water within a system of strong property rights.**

4. Conclusion: I was disappointed -- after so much discussion and dropping of hints -- to find that this part of the book did not have a thorough, concise and integrated presentation of market solutions to the problems outlined in Part 1, not-solved in Part 2, and discussed in broad terms in Part 3.*** Instead, page 317 has a bullet list of 16 often-overlapping recommendations (e.g., "meter water use, secure water for the environment, use price signals, create market incentives, encourage creative conservation," etc.) At a minimum, I would have preferred to have these suggestions included WITH the problems Glennon discusses in earlier chapters AND explained in greater detail.

I was also surprised that Glennon suggests a central role for Federal policy in water (and a national water tax). This idea makes little sense to me -- except after state and local water laws are reformed to approximate something close to normal.

Bottom Line: Glennon describes many of the problems that we face with water management. He also provides some good examples of what to do (and NOT do!) and solutions that vary from sensible to radical. Overall, these virtues were obscured by non-comparable statistics (how do you compare 2.5 gallons of water to make a gallon of gasoline to 0.7 gallons of water to generate a kilowatt of electricity?), failure (IMO) to offer a "provocative market-based system" with more structure,**** and too many stories stuffed with Proper Nouns.

For people who know lots about water (many readers here), I give this book THREE stars (out of five) -- just skip the first 100-200 pages. For beginners who want to know the many dimensions of the water problem, ways to solve it, and new things to consider, I give this book FOUR stars. Read it.
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In an email chat with Glennon, he said:
* that he wrote many examples to give newbies an idea of the size, scope and importance of the water problem. He did this because many people do not understand our complete dependence on water in every part of our lives. Good point!

** that he is between radicals in favor of markets (e.g., PERC) and radicals opposing them (e.g., Food and Water Watch). He, like me, sees a role of government in the regulation of water allocation and trade, but not a need for the government to monopolize control/provision of water...

*** Glennon said that the editors forced him to cut the length down below 400 pages, which is why this section was not larger. Darn.

**** I am prepared to blame the lack of a "provocative market-based system" on PR people looking for catchy ways to promote the book.

A reasonable, cautionary look at the most precious commodity on earth, how we squander it, how we can use it wisely. You will never take water for granted again. This is not just a scare book, it is a hope book, and every jurisdiction in America should take it into account when planning (or not planning) water use, zoning and building regulation, and growth.