The Big Thirst, page 38
For the parts of the world that have luxuriated in the golden age of water, the era of smart water need not be the start of an era in which water scarcity or water limits desiccate the way we live. Quite the contrary: Using the right water for the right purpose may well open our eyes to the kinds of untapped sources of water, starting with our own wastewater, that we routinely overlook now.
The biggest water problems of all are water illiteracy and water mythology. It is our understanding of water—whether we live in Toowoomba, Australia, or the slum of Vasant Kunj, India—that will ultimately determine whether we solve our water problems. With very few exceptions, nothing stands in our way except our own attitude.
That’s why the comments of Senator Arlen Specter that he simply doesn’t trust U.S. tap water are so unsettling, why the iPhone app offering to permanently archive your personal water consumption glass by glass is so silly. If we’re going to have an era of smart water, we’re going to have to leave the era of water mythology behind.
Our attitudes are already holding us back in ways we don’t ever get to see. The very same hotel executives at MGM Resorts who took a chance on a custom-designed showerhead for their luxury Las Vegas hotel, the Aria, had a second decision to make about the hotel’s plumbing: what kind of toilets to install in the 4,004 rooms. Senior vice president Cindy Ortega argued for installing dual-flush toilets, with one button for flushing liquids and a second button for flushing solids. The toilets are common across Europe, Asia, and Australia, and the flush button is elegantly designed and easy to understand—a small button for the small flush (1 gallon), a larger button for the large flush (1.6 gallons). Once you’ve used a dual-flush toilet, standard toilets seem primitive and pointlessly wasteful.
Dual-flush toilets are so rare in the United States, however, that they are a mere novelty. Despite the urgent water scarcity issues in Las Vegas, not a single major hotel there uses them. Ortega was all for them.
The conversation was as serious as the showerhead conversation, she says. “We installed dual-flush toilets as tests for some of the executives who have bathrooms in their offices.” There was a lot of discussion of whether the toilets were harder to clean, says Ortega, and about whether guests “would be ready to accept the fact that there wasn’t a trade-off in having one, in a luxury hotel.” There was also some question about whether guests would be able to figure out which button to push. “Would people push the wrong button? Would they push the button more than once?”
In the end, they went with a single-flush, low-flow toilet instead, 1.5 gallons per flush. “Whether it’s true that the guests would not accept it, we’ll never know,” says Ortega. “It was 2005 when we had to decide.”
Is it really possible that guests spending $400 a night for a room with a TV remote with twenty buttons, along with a second, touch-screen remote that controls the curtains and lighting for the whole room—not to mention the iPhone or BlackBerry that most visitors carry—is it really possible those guests wouldn’t be able to figure out which button to push to flush the toilet?
IT IS 63 DEGREES, the sky is clear blue and bright, the air has the freshness of spring in the mountains, when it still gets cool each night and each day has to warm up from scratch. I can hear the waterfalls roaring faintly in the distance.
A couple hundred steps through the woods is a small but dramatic canyon cut by Little Bushkill Creek, in the Pocono Mountains, a hundred miles north of Philadelphia, where I live, and a hundred miles west of New York City. The creek itself is no more than five or six steps wide, flowing fast, and as it comes down the flank of the mountain, it flumes over five waterfalls in a space that you can hike in just a few minutes. A leaf that hits the current just right can enter the Upper Canyon Falls and come washing out Lower Gorge Falls four or five minutes later.
The creek is surrounded by wooden boardwalks that run right alongside the falls themselves. In a few places, there are bridges spanning the creek, and you can stand two feet over the stream and look down over the very top of three different waterfalls, an incredible vantage.
The creek is shadowed and dappled, the water is the color of dark honey. Looking downstream toward the main falls, the water betrays no hint of the precipice to come right up to the last moment. The water folds over the edge and shatters into a white cascade of foam and mist a hundred feet tall, crashing into the pool below and quietly reassembling itself into Little Bushkill Creek.
This is a place where you can get right up close to the water, to the creek, to the waterfalls themselves.
At the top of the series of falls, standing on a footbridge over a short, six-foot waterfall, you can smell the water below—woodsy—and your legs are brushed by a light, insistent breeze. That’s the force of the stream and the waterfall pulling the air along with it. I take in a deep breath, and it’s like breathing in a bit of the mountain and the sunshine and the creek itself.
It’s hard to be in a bad mood around beautiful flowing water. Whatever cares you have are lightened when you spend some time with water. The presence of a brisk, bright mountain stream makes you smile, it makes you feel better, whether you’re already feeling good or you’re low. Being in water is almost always refreshing—whether a bath, or a swimming pool, or the surf at the beach—but simply being near water is refreshing.
Standing alongside Little Bushkill Creek as it breaks over the falls, I suddenly solve one of the trivial if nagging water mysteries of the modern world: why we leave the water running while we brush our teeth. The answer is simplicity itself. We like running water. Even if it’s just coming out of the bathroom faucet and splashing into a white porcelain sink.
A short hike above the falls, the creek widens out, and it’s clear and shallow enough that you can see the bottom. There’s a spot where a huge, flat rock sits in the midday sun in the middle of the stream, a rock the size of a queen-size bed. I rock-hop out to the boulder, lie on my back, and close my eyes. Dry and warm, I am instantly immersed in water. I am surrounded by the stream, by the colorful chatter of flowing water: bubbling, sliding, slapping, gurgling. We have more words for the sounds water makes than for water itself.
In many places around Bushkill Falls, there is not the slightest hint of the world beyond the forest and the water. There is no cell phone service, there is almost no litter, no power lines or buildings. Just the path, and the sounds of the forest and the creek. It strikes me that, even for solitary pioneers crossing the continent, it would be hard to feel completely alone with such lively flowing water at hand.21
Water is a pleasure. It is fun. Our sense of water, our connection to water, is primal. Anyone who has ever given a bath to a nine-month-old baby—and received a soaking in return—knows that the sheer exuberance of creating splashing cascades of water is born with us. We don’t have to be taught to enjoy water.
We may not know the details about how it gets to us, how much it costs, or what’s necessary to protect it, but we like water. Each of us individually, and all of us together, have a huge reservoir of goodwill about water, even a sense of proprietorship. The water that comes out of the kitchen faucet—that’s my water.
When it comes to thinking differently about water, when it comes to actually appreciating it and doing the work required to reimagine how we use it every day, that affection, that sense of protectiveness, is one of water’s lucky virtues.
Climate change may or may not be caused by human activity, it may or may not be remediated with a cap-and-trade system, but in terms of the public conversation, it’s hard to muster much affection for the atmosphere, or for polar ice caps. That’s one reason polar bears are so often part of the conversation.
The financial system might well be in dire need of structural reform, and the stability of the global economy may indeed depend on getting that right—not to mention the stability of each of our jobs—but the banking system isn’t fun, and few of us have any sense of protectiveness about it.
We all know what it feels like to be thirsty, and what it feels like to be refreshed with a glass of water. We know what a dried-up lawn looks like, what it feels like, and we know what a plush, well-watered lawn feels like. We know what water that’s been sitting in the bottom of the canoe all summer looks like, and what it’s like to stand at the base of a waterfall and feel the power of water, the spray and the spirit. We do have a big thirst— physically, societally, and also emotionally.
When you think about the qualities of water that are so appealing— the energy, the playfulness, the adaptability, the variety of mood, the artistry, and also the sheer everyday usefulness—what’s striking is how much the personality of water mirrors our own personality as people. In the best sense, the spirit of water and our own spirit are the same.
Many civilizations have been crippled or destroyed by an inability to understand water or manage it. We have a huge advantage over the generations of people who have come before us, because we can understand water and we can use it smartly. Everything about water is about to change— except, of course, for water itself. It is our fate that hangs on how we approach water—the quality of our lives, the variety and resilience of our society, the character of our humanity. Water itself will be fine. Water will remain exuberantly wet.
NOTES
A NOTE ON SOURCES
One of the thrilling and humbling aspects of writing about water is the vast range of people who devote their careers to studying water’s impact and influence, and the libraries of literature available about water.
I have used these endnotes for three basic purposes. First, where I have done anything more than basic arithmetic to come up with a particular way of capturing water’s impact in statistical or numerical terms, I have tried to provide that mathematical reasoning so others can understand how you figure out how many molecules of water there are in a single blood cell, or how you calculate that a single serving of rice requires 14.4 gallons of water. And, of course, so others can check my math.
Second, I have occasionally used the notes to expand on a point, where that explanation or additional information would have slowed down the main text, but where the information is relevant enough that curious readers might appreciate knowing more.
And I have used the notes for the traditional purpose of providing source references and credit to the work of others, which I have consulted, relied on, and quoted.
All the online references were checked and current as of October 1, 2010. Newspaper and magazine stories for which there are only standard citations, and no online links, are not available online.
For ease of use, these notes will also be available online at www.thebigthirst.com.
Most of what I’ve learned about water has come from conversations with a wide range of people, some quoted in the text and some not. For a more complete list of people interviewed, by chapter, see the Acknowledgments.
1. THE REVENGE OF WATER
1. The first shuttle mission, the test flight of Columbia (STS-1), was launched April 12, 1981, and succeeded without the water sound-suppression system. But the shock waves recorded during launch caused NASA to install the system before the second flight.
The peak noise at the pad comes 5 seconds after launch, according to NASA, with the shuttle at 300 feet above the pad and the full force of its five engines reflecting off the pad’s surface. By the time the shuttle is rising through 1,000 feet, the noise on the pad is falling off rapidly.
Scientists with payloads on the shuttle are required to harden them to withstand 145 decibels, inside the shuttle’s payload bay. NASA says the cushion of water keeps the sound down to 142 decibels inside the shuttle’s payload bay. (The noise of a chain saw is about 110 decibels.)
A description of the sound suppression system at Kennedy Space Center’s launchpads 39-A and 39-B is below (scroll down to “sound suppression water system”). NASA calls the on-pad water delivery valves “rain birds.” http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts-lc39.html.
2. The U.S. Geological Survey report Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005 says that total water use for all purposes in the U.S. is 410 billion gallons a day. Of that, electric power plants use 200 billion gallons (49 percent).
Using the 2005 Census figure of 296 million Americans, electric power plants in the U.S. are using 676 gallons of water per person. As with water use, though, that doesn’t mean the electricity that each of us uses requires 676 gallons of water per day— that includes electricity used for all industrial and commercial purposes.
According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in a typical year, residential customers use 37 percent of electricity generated, commercial customers use 36 percent, and industrial customers use 27 percent. (Data from 2009 are a little anomalous because of the recession.)
Electricity used in U.S. homes requires 37 percent of that 676 gallons per person per day, or 250 gallons per person per day.
The full USGS water-use report for 2005 is here (PDF). http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1344/pdf/c1344.pdf.
The EIA data on electricity use by broad sector are here. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_1.html.
3. 2008/2009 Sustainability Review, Coca-Cola Company, 2009, p. 31 (PDF). http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/pdf/2008–2009_sustainability_review.pdf.
4. Women have less water, on average, because fat contains almost no water, and women in general have a higher percentage of body fat than men. Water weighs 8.33 pounds per gallon.
5. Peter Mayer, William DeOreo, Eva Opitz, et al., Residential End Uses of Water, 2000, Water Research Foundation.
The executive summary is accessible here. http://www.waterresearchfoundation.org/research/topicsandprojects/execSum/241.aspx.
More detail on the study is here. http://www.unep.or.jp/ietc/Publications/ReportSeries/IETCRep9/4.paper-F/4-F-nels1.asp.
The EPA’s presentation of the study is here. http://www.epa.gov/watersense/pubs/indoor.html.
6. Average residential water consumption in the United Kingdom is small compared with the U.S.—40 gallons (150 liters) per person per day, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Estimated Household Water Consumption: Regional Trends 38, Office for National Statistics. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=7812.
With a total population of 61.4 million people (2008), Brits use just 2.5 billion gallons of water at home.
Average residential water consumption in Canada is closer to U.S. use—91 gallons (343 liters) per person per day.
Factsheet: Water Use & Consumption in Canada, Program on Water Governance (PDF). http://www.watergovernance.ca/factsheets/pdf/FS_Water_Use.pdf.
With a population of 34 million (2008), that’s 3 billion gallons of water per day.
UK and Canadian households, together, use 5.5 billion gallons of water a day for all purposes.
7. Water losses by U.S. utilities are calculated by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), among others, at 7 billion gallons a day, which comes to 15.8 percent of the total “utility supply” of 44.2 billion gallons a day, as calculated by the USGS.
Drinking Water: Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, ASCE, 2009. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/drinking-water.
Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005, USGS, 2009 (PDF). http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1344/pdf/c1344.pdf.
8. VEWA Survey: Comparison of European Water and Wastewater Prices, Metropolitan Consulting Group, May 2006, p. 4 (PDF). http://www.bdew.de/bdew.nsf/id/DE_id100110127_vewa-survey---comparison-of-european-water-and-wastewater-pr/$file/0.1_resource_2006_7_14.pdf.
9. David M. Cutler and Grant Miller, “The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The Twentieth-Century United States,” Demography, vol. 42, no. 1, February 2005, pp. 1–22. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/demography/v042/42.1cutler.html.
The full text of the study, including charts and tables, is available online (PDF). http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/cutler/files/cutler_miller_cities.pdf.
10. Cutler and Miller, PDF file at economics.harvard.edu, p. 18.
In 1900, infectious diseases, often carried by water, were responsible for 44 percent of U.S. deaths. By 1940, they were responsible for only 18 percent of deaths. (Ibid., p. 6.)
11. Ibid., p. 4.
12. Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005, USGS, p. 19 (PDF). http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1344/pdf/c1344.pdf.
13. Estimated Use of Water in the United States, 1955, USGS, 1957. http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/cir398.
14. No one routinely gathers data on the average monthly water bill. But the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has used usage and fee surveys to estimate that the monthly bill is $34 per household in the U.S. (just for water, not including sewer service).
The average monthly cable TV bill in the U.S. in 2009 was $70; the average monthly cell phone bill in 2009 was $93, according to a study by the research firm Centris.
Communications Services Spending Increasing, Centris, January 26, 2010 (PDF). http://www.centris.com/Docs/PR/Nov%20Insights%20Report%20final.pdf.
15. The average price of 1,000 gallons of tap water for residential customers in the U.S. was $3.24, according to the 2008 survey conducted by the AWWA.
16. Al Goodman, “Spain Suffers Worst Drought,” CNN, April 18, 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/18/spain.drought/index.html.
17. “Drought-Stricken Barcelona Ships In Water,” Associated Press, May 16, 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24629154/.
