mussels, river birds and other aquatic life to survive; a 2008 assessment led by the USGS found that 40 percent of all fish species in North America are at risk of extinction. Meanwhile,
many leaders and
localities are calling for even bigger ver- sions of past water management strate- gies. By some estimates, the volume of water relocated through river transfer schemes could more than double glob- ally by 2020. But mega-projects are risky in a warming world, where rainfall and river flow patterns are changing in uncertain ways and require costly power for pumping, moving, treating and dis- tributing at each stage.
Some planners and policymakers are eyeing desalination as a silver bullet solution to potential water shortages. But they miss—or dismiss—the perverse iro- ny: by burning more fossil fuels and by making local water supplies more and more dependent on increasingly expen- sive energy, desalination creates more problems than it solves. Producing one cubic meter of drinkable water from salt water requires about two kilowatt-hours of electricity, using present technology.
Water for People and Nature
Thus, a vanguard of citizens, communi- ties, farmers and corporations are think- ing about water in a new way. They’re asking what we really need the water for, and whether we can meet that need with less. The result of this shift in thinking is a new movement in water management that focuses on ingenuity and ecological intelligence instead of big pumps, pipe- lines, dams and canals. These solutions
The United States withdraws more fresh water per capita than any other country, much of which we could save. The vast majority of demand does not require drinkable water.
Source: Pacific Institute
tend to work with nature, rather than against it, mak- ing effective use of the “ecosystem services” provided by healthy water- sheds and wetlands. Through better technologies and informed choices,
they seek to raise water productivity and make every drop count.
Communities are finding that pro- tecting watersheds is an effective way to make sure water supplies are clean and reliable; plus, they can do the work of a water treatment plant in filtering out pol- lutants at a lower cost. New York City is investing $1.5 billion to restore and protect the Catskill-Delaware Water- shed, which supplies 90 percent of its drinking water, in lieu of constructing a $10 billion filtration plant that would cost an additional $300 million a year to operate. Research published in Natural Resources Forum further shows that a number of other U.S. cities—from tiny Auburn, Maine, to Seattle—have saved hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and operating costs of filtration plants by instead opting for watershed protection. Communities facing increased flood threats are achieving cost-effec- tive protection by restoring rivers. After enduring 19 floods between 1961 and 1997, Napa, California, opted for this approach over the conventional route of channeling and building levees. In partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a $366 million project is reconnecting the Napa River with its historic floodplain, moving homes and businesses out of harm’s way, revital- izing wetlands and marshlands and constructing levees and bypass chan- nels in strategic locations. Napa
natural awakenings October 2011
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