High and dry

Pharmaceuticals infiltrating the drinking water supplies of millions, here and on the East Coast ... the rocket-fuel additive perchlorate bubbling up in hundreds of water wells, most of them in Southern California, and many here in Pasadena, some of which remain closed due to contamination ... subterranean "plumes" of cancer-causing hexavalent chromium, Chromium6, wending their way east from the San Fernando Valley, threatening underground drinking supplies ...

While all of these scenarios are certainly worrisome, and are at the forefront of local, state and federal efforts to clean up and manage our remaining water resources over the ensuing decades, they pale in comparison to what is happening to dwindling drinking water supplies around the world.

Saturday is World Water Day, an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. As part of an ongoing campaign to raise awareness about a global shortage of clean water, in 2006 the United Nations General Assembly declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation, part of the UN's International Decade for Action on Water for Life.

Why all this attention to things that most people take for granted, like drinking clean water and using clean bathrooms? Because some 18 percent of the world's population - more than 1 billion people - wouldn't know clean water if they saw it, and roughly 2.6 billion people, says the UN, don't have access to basic toilets.

Beyond that, scientists have been telling us for years that greenhouse gases are enveloping the planet, which - as a consequence of both natural phenomena and relentless carbon dioxide and other emissions by industrialized nations like the United States and developing countries like China - is only getting warmer and drier.

Already semi-arid climates, like that of Southern California, which is in its eighth year of drought, rely heavily on rain, snow, rivers and underground aquifers to sustain the ever-growing water needs of tens of millions of people, with tens of millions more on the way. Along with all this poisonous chemical interaction in the atmosphere and underground, contamination, overconsumption and ongoing drought could be even more catastrophic under the best doomsday scenarios.

Unfortunately, one such rendering - simply running out of clean usable water to drink and bathe in - is possible, say people like Tim Brick, Pasadena's representative to the Metropolitan Water District (MWD), and other experts in the world of water management.

One reason for such dire forecasts is that disasters of the manmade variety aren't all Southern Californians have to worry about when it comes to water conservation, Brick once told a House subcommittee probing the subject.

"California's history shows us that change in climate and weather, both natural and human-induced, are inevitable," Brick testified last summer. The entirety of Brick's remarks can be found at www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/low_boil/4749/.

"This climate change will have a dramatic impact on water supplies and demands and will necessitate a strong ethic of water-use efficiency in our communities, as well as the aggressive development of innovative alternative water supplies to meet growing water needs," he continued.

There's no way around it, Brick explained: "The preponderance of scientific evidence suggests there will be reduced Colorado River stream flow and water supplies, as well as increasing severity, frequency and duration of future droughts."

Some, like Maria Elena Kennedy of the California Latino Water Coalition, believe nothing is possible without a coordinated and sustained effort on the part of government agencies to improve water infrastructure and delivery systems in the next few decades.

"If we do not come together as a state or put forth a comprehensive solution to our water woes, we will soon see people who live in small, mostly poor communities fighting desperately for dwindling supplies," Kennedy wrote in a recent column for the Pasadena Star-News. "Other communities will then follow."

Michael Hurley, chair of the Pasadena Environmental Advisory Commission, agreed with Kennedy's assessment. However, "historically," interagency coordination like that "hasn't happened," he said.

Although Hurley also agreed that that the world picture for water appears grim, Pasadena is in good shape, at least for the time being, primarily because of what he called "passive conservation" methods, such as government-imposed code restrictions and rate structures.

"There are things that we can do, and we are fortunate to have good local supplies," he said. With the right set of regulations in place, "we can cushion ourselves from significant impacts," he added. With some luck, there will be some rain on the Colorado River Valley areas and some snow will fall in the Sierras, but "obviously that's only giving us a bit of time to talk about the long-term solutions," Hurley said.

Will whatever is done to help mitigate combined assaults by nature and man on water supplies be enough to divert disaster? Perhaps, but more than likely the answer is no, at least not immediately, says scientist and author Tim Flannery.

When Flannery, voted Australia's Scientist of the Year of 2007, spoke with alternative newscaster Amy Goodman on her show "Democracy Now!" in October, Southern California had just experienced devastating wildfires. As that was happening, much of the Southeast US - from Tennessee through the Carolinas and Georgia - was suffering through an unusual and severe drought, even while New Orleans continued getting drenched with torrential downpours.

Goodman asked Flannery if there was a connection between the fire, the water and the drought. His answer: Absolutely.

"Americans might feel they're suffering from a whole lot of severe weather at the moment, but look globally and you see exactly the same thing around the world. Anywhere with a Mediterranean climate, such as Greece or Australia or California, is suffering extreme wildfires," he observed at the time.

"The climate is slowly shifting, so that the desert regions adjacent to those Mediterranean areas are starting to expand. ... The same with droughts and floods. It's not just the Southeast of the United States. Europe has had its great droughts and water shortages. Australia is in the grip of a drought that's almost unbelievable in its ferocity. Again, this is a global picture. We're just getting much less usable water than we did a decade or two or three decades ago."

Read the rest of Flannery's discussion with Goodman at www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/world_on_fire/5285.

Today, water - or more to the point, clean, drinkable water - is becoming scarcer and scarcer in all parts of the globe, including here at home. To address that,

the UN launched a decade-long campaign to help combat not the likelihood, but eventuality, of a world without water.

Every year, inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene contribute to the deaths of 1.5 million children, the agency has found. "Access to sanitation is deeply connected to virtually all the [UN's] Millennium Development Goals, in particular those involving the environment, education, gender equality and the reduction of child mortality and poverty," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, according to the UN Web site. "An estimated 42,000 people die every week from diseases related to low water quality and an absence of adequate sanitation. This situation is unacceptable."

Statistics compiled by the UN are voluminous and disturbing. Did you know that the world's population, 6.2 billion people in 2002, is expected to increase to approximately 7.2 billion people by 2015, and that almost 95 percent of the increase is expected to be in developing regions? Or that only one percent of the world's total water resources are available for human use? While 70 percent of the world's surface is covered by water, 97.5 percent of that is salt water. The remaining 2.5 percent is fresh water, up to 68.7 percent of it frozen in ice caps and glaciers.

Given all of the planet's freshwater limitations, other data compiled by the UN is downright frightening:

• About 70 percent of all available fresh water is used for irrigation in agriculture, much of it is lost to evaporation or going to waste due to inefficient irrigation systems.
• Water use increased six-fold during the 20th century, more than twice the rate of population growth.
• Groundwater in parts of the US, China and India is being consumed faster than it is being replenished, and groundwater tables are steadily falling.
• Some rivers, such as the Colorado River - California's water lifeline - and the Yellow River in China often run dry before they reach the sea.
• It is estimated that about half the world's freshwater wetlands have been lost.
• Some 90 percent of sewage and 70 percent of industrial waste in developing countries is discharged into watercourses without treatment.

For more on the UN and the Year of Sanitation, visit www.un.org/waterforlifedecade.

Similar numbers facing California are just as daunting. Over the next four decades, the state's population is expected to be 60 million - up by nearly 25 million from today's numbers - very thirsty people.

This week, Pasadena Weekly writers led by Jana J. Monji looked at the world water crisis; its causes, its impacts on our daily lives and some alternatives we can employ to help stave off disaster in the not-too-distant future.

It is our hope that you will be educated, enlightened and moved enough to take action; to think globally, act locally and make a contribution to saving our parched planet.