Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
8
CHAPTER
CAN OUR WATER BE SAVED?
Human history becomes more and more a race between education
and catastrophe.
—H. G. Wells
The Outline of History
(1920)
N
ow that you've heard the doom and gloom about our nation's
water supply, you're probably either scared that the United States is
drying up, paranoid that the water from your tap is hopelessly pol-
luted and could make you deathly ill, or a combination of both. Is
there any hope for the future of water in the United States?
There are no easy answers. Environmentalists, big corporations,
municipalities, metropolitan areas, farmers and ranchers with water
and those without, researchers, states, courts, and the federal gov-
ernment all have different viewpoints on the future of America's
most precious resource. Individuals are left in the crossfi re. When
it comes to water, consensus is a tough sell. After all, everyone has
a vested interest—we all need water to survive. Yet, as the many
tales of water success refl ect, compromise and consensus are not
unachievable.
Peter Gleick of the Pacifi c Institute stops short of calling the wa-
ter situation across the United States a crisis
.
“We have serious
water problems, but, unlike the global water problem, we have the
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