Blue Revolution Part 5

Weave lost what we knew when we relied on a local river to run the grist mill. Weave lost the sense of place we had when kidsa boundaries were defined by streams rather than by concrete culverts. Weave lost the connection between the water we bathe in and the last little patch of wetlands surviving in the neighborhood.

A natural water body somewhere feeds every tap and toilet in the nation. But most people couldnat identify their water source. So, how would they know if itas in trouble?

No one wants to return to the time when we had to schlep our own water and worry about its cleanliness. But the aquavores in Texas Hill Country were onto something when they noticed their intimately local water supply helping build a communitywide ethic.

At the Pacific Inst.i.tute for Studies in Environment and Security, in Oakland, California, cofounder and president Peter H. Gleick has spent a career pondering water challenges on the global scale. But heas recently called for thinking about water in a much smaller way: a alocal water movement.a4 We make an effort to buy local goods to support community businesses. We try to eat locally grown food to help the farmers and economies where we live, and to save on the fuel and packaging needed to haul produce across the country or the world. (Not to mention that the food tastes better.) Local water reflects the same ideaa"with water from nearby rivers, streams, or aquifers treated and managed by local, rather than unseen and distant, authorities.

aLocal watera may not be what you want to hear if you live in Las Vegas, which relies on a shrinking Lake Mead for 90 percent of its water supply. Just like itas not always convenient to aeat local,a local water wonat always be possible. Major metropolitan areas such as New York City and Los Angeles outgrew their ability to provide local water years ago, in the same way they do not grow enough fooda"for the time being, anywaya"to support populations of millions.5 But, as urban agriculture is helping return locally grown crops to major metropolitan areas, so the blue revolution will help local water make a comeback in communities that cannot imagine it today.

Gleick isnat saying cities should shrink, or cut off water transferred from neighboring watersheds. Rather, a local movement would seek out every drop on hand before looking afield, treating and reusing water to the greatest extent possible. Las Vegas would reimagine the way it uses water now before tapping groundwater from rural Nevada and Utah. Communities that rely on local water supplies would try to keep it that way, boosting efficiency and reusing water for lawns and gardens, clothes washers and toilets.

During the rare deluge in Los Angeles, enough water pours off the streets and into the ma.s.sive storm-drain system to quench the needs of more than 130,000 homes for a year. With relatively simple water-harvesting techniques in new construction and redevelopmentsa"installing cisterns and designing landscapes that allow water to seep back into the grounda"some estimates show LA could increase local supplies to half its annual demand.6 In the mid-1980s, Boston faced the archetypal American water crunch: a growing population slurped and flushed so much potable water that demand would soon outstrip the cityas primary supplya"the thirty-nine-square-mile Quabbin Reservoir, one of the largest human-made public water supplies in the nation.7 Boston water officials looked to the familiar path of big infrastructure. They wanted to build a pipeline to the Quabbin from New Englandas largest river, the Connecticut, which stretches from northern New Hampshire four hundred miles south to Long Island Sound. Area residents and environmental groups were strongly opposed. They insisted the region could more easily reduce demand, an option better for taxpayers as well as the Atlantic salmon in the Connecticut River.8 Yielding to public opinion, the Ma.s.sachusetts Water Resources Authority, a water wholesaler for 2.5 million residents and more than 5,500 large industries, began an aggressive conservation program in 1986. It went after leaks and repaired community pipes. It retrofitted 370,000 homes with low-flow plumbing fixtures. It raised water rates. It worked with area businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations to cut water use in large operations.9 Despite population growth, total water use has dropped 43 percent from the 1980 peak of 126 billion gallons to 71 billion in 2009. Today, the Connecticut River diversion is long off the table, says Sandra Postel, of the Global Water Policy Project. The water authorityas current controversy? What to do with a asurplusa in the Quabbin Reservoir.10 On the flood-control side, local water means communities shape their own projects rather than having them dictated by federal agencies. Nearly twenty years ago, citizens of Napa County, California, helped convince the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to overhaul a flood-control project that would have carved channels through downtown and lined them with concrete, a disaster for both the City of Napaas central business district and the Napa River. In 1998, county voters approved a half-cent sales tax to share the costs of an ambitious aliving rivera flood-control project. The local tax, augmented with federal money and private grants, bought up more than 800 acres that had been drained for agriculture and industry. Today, those once-neglected lands are shimmering salt.w.a.ter and freshwater wetlands drawing numbers of fish and birds unseen in recent decades. Along another stretch of the river, some of Napa Countyas major vineyard owners banded together and donated productive cropland to restore five more miles of the watershed.11 Local water leads to wiser, more ethical use, and makes us good neighbors. But it is also key to the blue revolution for closing the distance between Americans and their water. It reconnects us to water and watershedsa"the land that drains to streams and riversa"in the same way Sat.u.r.day-morning farmersa markets have reconnected us to local produce and the men and women who grow it. In Napa, so many citizens wanted to help save the river that policy makers and scientists were able to hand over important monitoring jobs to volunteers. Citizens measure water quality, flow, velocity, and rainfall. Their data has proved critical to computer-modeling programs that generate flood warnings and other reports. Volunteers also map and keep track of wildlife and vegetation, and they survey fish populations, all projects for which most governments rely on scientistsa"and forgo when agency budgets shrink. Community college students are a formal part of the monitoring, too; children and teenagers, meanwhile, visit streams, identify native plants, and discuss pollution through grade school and high school watershed curricula.12 Ask American kids to describe their neighborhood, and most will tell you the names of the streets they live near, the schools, the Kroger, Walmart, or Chuck E. Cheeseas. Imagine if they also knew the name of their local watershed. Imagine if they could see more of its lifeblood flowinga"in creeks and streams and restored wetlands, rather than behind chain-linked storm drains.

Children in Napa know their Napa River Watershed. Those in Portland, Oregon, know the Bull Run Watershed, which they tour on daylong field trips. Boston kids converge on their historic harbor to learn about the five rivers that flow into it. By building a const.i.tuency for local water in this generation, these communities are building a water ethic for the next.

I have an environmental-historian friend who is skeptical that Americans will embrace a water ethic in his lifetime. Yet, having witnessed revolutionary change in the behavior of the entire nation in one generation, he holds out hope that his five-year-old daughter will see the ethic. He cites the transformation in Americaas littering habits. Forty years ago, it was fairly common to see people fling empty cigarette packs, fast food bags, and other trash out car windows while driving down the highway at top speeds. Itas not something you see anymore.

Litter research confirms a dramatic turnaround. In 1969, the Keep America Beautiful organization conducted a major study of littering in the United States and found that exactly half the Americans surveyed had littered in the past month. The organization replicated its study forty years later, in 2009, and found an astonishing drop, with only 15 percent of respondents having littered. In their a.n.a.lysis of actual trash in public places, researchers found 61 percent less litter in 2009 than in 1969.13 Princ.i.p.al investigator P. Wesley Schultz, a professor of psychology at California State University, San Marcos, ties the decrease in part to widespread educational campaigns, ongoing clean-up efforts, and big changes by American businessa"primarily in packaging, such as the elimination of soda-can pull-off tops. But most responsible for the turnaround was a personal obligation to not littera"an ethical belief that littering is wrong. Fines and threats of punishment didnat matter much. In fact, recent psychological research suggests threats can actually trigger undesirable behavior because they act as a reminder.14 When you pa.s.s by that large billboard scolding that youare allowed to water only two times a week, it might just serve to remind you that your gra.s.s is looking a little peaked.

Schultz, who, it must be said, never litters but does water his California lawn, now happens to be studying water wastea"liquid litter. Besides the fact that personal obligation is more meaningful than any number of water cops, what strikes him about the results for both littering and watering is where the obligation, or ethic, comes from. Itas driven more by physical and social settings than by internal compa.s.s. In other words, if youare at a public park where garbage is heaped all over the ground, youare likely to leave your picnic detritus behind, too. But picnicking at a sparkling, pristine place, your personal obligation kicks in and keeps you from littering. Itas the same with lawn watering. aThe norm, in most places, is still to have gra.s.s and to use a lot of water,a says Schultz. aSo you look at your neighbors and your community and your city, and you see green gra.s.s as a sign of success. You donat want to be different. You donat want to be deviant. You donat want to be the only one with the cactus and the rocks.a15 Someday, you may not want to be the only one with bright green gra.s.s. The aesthetica"not in favor of cactus and rocks, but preferring the beautiful natives that defined our local landscapes before imported turfgra.s.s replaced thema"has already emerged in some parts of the United States as communities forge their own water ethic. No two will look the same. In Philadelphia, the ethic looks like green roofs. In Seattle, it looks like 90,000 acres of wild watershed preserved along the Cedar Rivera"a commitment made a century ago and completed by city government in the 1990s. In the Klamath River Basin, it is a long-time-coming agreement to tear down dams and save both fish and local agriculture. In Kansas City, it looks like Ten Thousand Rain Gardens. Thatas the name of a ma.s.sive horticultural effort launched by Kansas City mayor Kay Barnes in 2005 that deployed citizens instead of big new stormwater pipes to reduce runoff and clean up water pollution. In the Sacramentoa"San Joaquin Delta of California and in the Everglades of Florida, it will look like greater investment in the large-scale restoration of wetlands and less spent on the kinds of uncertain, big-tech fixes that helped ruin the ecosystems. New economic models that put a tangible dollar value on restoration, adding up benefits from clean drinking water to flood safety to recreation, will help build support rather than suspicion.16 Likewise, no other countryas water ethic is just right for the United States. Americans wouldnat tolerate the level of government control in Singapore. Hurricane Katrina made clear that we are too large, diverse, and regionalized for even the worst water calamity to bring us together in a national aNever againa pledge like the Dutch. And unlike in Australia, where the entire continent can be battered by drought or by flood, our water problems are intensely local: the Southeast can be swamped with hurricane waters at the same time the Southwest is scorched in drought.

But if the Netherlands, Singapore, and Australia have one thing in common, it is the ongoing conversation among citizens, government, and industry about water and its value. In Perth, the daily newspaper runs charts showing water levels in the dams right alongside the weather forecast. Sue Murphy is on the speakeras circuit, challenging citizens and college students ato design a future which is our owna"resilient to our changing climate.a17 The Dutch are spending billions of euros to adapt to the water challenges of climate change, relocating or buying out farmers and in some cases building communities to float.

Children, notably, are part of the conversation. Childrenas water museums in Singapore and the Netherlands are jam-packed with elementary-school-age students. On a school day in Singapore, kids run through the halls in tidy uniforms, furiously filling out water worksheets a.s.signed by their teachers. During spring break in the Netherlands, kids still cram the Watermuseum, built inside and under a thirteenth-century mill in a national park called Sonsbeek. Heidi Van Zwieten watches her son, six, and daughter, four, jump on a scale that showed how much of their weight was water. Most Dutch kids, she says, seem to know as much about water scarcity as they do about their countryas flood menace.

The local water board runs the museum and provides water curriculum to the Arnhem schools. Museum director Jos van den Mosselaar tells me there is good reason why his exhibits are oriented more toward conservation than toward Dutch flood history.

aOur history makes children angry with water,a he says, aand we donat want them to be angry.

aWe want them to know the history. But we really want them to know how lucky they are to have a drink.a The blue revolution is a reconnection to water. It gives children more natural waters to play ina"flowing springs and rivers. It alters the way our communities look: More meandering streams, less concrete. More natural wetlands thronged by living things, fewer chain-linked retention ponds. More green roofs, less asphalt. More shade trees, less open lawn. More plant buffers to filter rain, fewer stagnant storm-water basins. More community farms, less industrial irrigation.

As much as this revolution is a physical change in landscape, a turn away from super-sized infrastructure and toward local water, it is also a mental shifta"a water consciousness. It is a water ethic for America.

More lyrical voices have tried to sound this call. The Global Water Policy Projectas Sandra Postel defines the essence of a water ethic as making aprotection of freshwater ecosystems a central goal in all that we do.a18 Oregon writer and ethicist Kathleen Dean Moore makes the moral argument that ataking whatever we need from the world to support our comfortable lives, and leaving for the future only degraded rivers, unreliable freshwater supplies, impoverished oceans, and an unstable climate is not worthy of us as moral beings.a19 Aldo Leopoldas biographer, Curt Meine, connects water to the health of the land as a whole, underscoring his subjectas belief that such an ethic aentails responsibility for the healthy functioning of the entire biotic community.a20 Leopold described his land ethic as a acommunity instinct-in-the-making.a His hydrologist son, Luna, applied his fatheras concept specifically to water. Luna articulated a water ethic as a set of aguiding beliefsa for citizens, large water users, and government. Most important, for him, was the warm and spiritual areverence for rivers.a But the lyricism and the reverence are not enough. He expressed the cold realities, too: Technology cannot fix all our water problems. Indefinite expansion of our water supplies is not possible. With natureas lessons in mind, we can find the balance point at which our water use today doesnat jeopardize fresh, clean water for our children tomorrow.

Water laws, water politics, water funding, and even water science can bend in all sorts of strange ways. A shared water ethic is the only straight guide we have to know whether water decisions are right for future generations. All our choices about water come down to the ethic: from the biggest, whether to transfer the Mississippi River west, to the smallest, whether to create English gardens and quench them with potable water.

After all my searching, from the NEWater plant in Singapore to Simon Bar Sinisteras Big Dipper plot in Underdog, I thought Luna Leopold had come closest to articulating a water ethic for America. I sketched out one of my own, outlining common goals with the raindrop reminder that they are fluida"able to aevolve in the minds of the thinking communitya21: a Americans value water, from appreciating local streams to pricing water right.

a We work together to use less and lessa"rather than fight each other to grab more and more.

a We try to keep water local.

a We avoid the two big mistakes of our history: overtapping aquifers and surface waters and overrelying on the costliest fixes that bring unintended consequences to future generations.

a We leave as much as prudently possible in naturea"aquifers, wetlands, and riversa"so that our children and grandchildren, with benefit of time and evolving knowledge, can make their own decisions about water.

Getting there will take political will, what Luna called athe acid test of leadership.a22 It also will require courage. It takes courage to be the first person on the block to transition from a bright-green lawn to your own, water-wise definition of beauty. It takes courage to be the one faculty member in the Extension office to question whether practices are really helping or hurting water. It takes courage to be the one engineer in the firm who defies pressure to donate to political campaigns. To be the member of Congress who speaks out against irrigation subsidies. To be the local elected official to stand up for higher water rates and recognize the value of this national treasure.

The water ethic begins with that one, brave steward. Then, it spreads out into the community, building collective courage among citizens, businesspeople, church members, political leaders. Just like ripples of children playing in a wide, free river.

Acknowledgments.

This morning, Christmas, the gift I was burning to open was the one from my children, Will and Ilana Hoover, currently nine and six. I knew it was a book. They had gone into the bookstore and asked the clerk to help them find a certain author. They chose a t.i.tle by this mysterious author and had it gift-wrapped in cat-and-dog paper.

I have never seen them so excited about a present. They kept giving me one, intriguing hint: aMom, you talk about this writer every single day!a I racked my brain. I could not imagine any one writer who had dominated my thoughts, much less my conversations with my kids.

When I carefully opened the cat-and-dog paper, I was amazed to find A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. Before that sweet moment, I had not realized how big a place in our family Blue Revolution had taken up since our summer vacation in 2009, when we enjoyed trips to Leopoldas shack and the biggest water park in America. Six months later, Will cast a special Harry Potter spell on me to land a book contracta"complete with local water and a cat whiskera"and it worked. (Thanks to my literary agents, Sandra Dijkstra and Elise Cap.r.o.n, for the real magic.) I thank Will and Ilana for putting up with this other, demanding baby with such good sportsmanshipa"indeed, with such exuberance. I also thank them for opening my eyes to the importance of free-flowing water in the lives of children. They have shown me how perfectly a river rocks a baby to sleep in the bottom of her canoe-cradle, how mastering a rope swing builds confidence in a small boy.

I am often asked how, with these kids, I can write books and juggle a full-time job and many other pursuits. My running joke is, aI married a superhero.a But itas not really a joke. You would not be holding this book if not for the superhero, Aaron Hoover. Aaron is a talented speechwriter who edits my work before anyone else, saving me much embarra.s.sment. He proved equally adept at full-time parenting, caring well for our children for weeks at a time so that I could tour far-off rivers and water plants for Blue. Aaronas love and support keeps me buoyed during even the confidence-bashed times in every authoras life.

Next, I am ever grateful for my writing friendship with Jack E. Davis. The environmental historian who is author of An Everglades Providence, the biography of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, writes as cleverly as his subject. I have the great fortune to be able to e-mail Jack a metaphor at 3 a.m. and know by 5 a.m. whether I should trash it or keep at it. Jack helped shape Blue from the big picture to the small bottle: I thank him and his daughter, Willa, for finding the Big Dipper episode while mining Underdog cartoons.

I also could not have written Blue without the support of Mark Howard, my editor for thirteen years at Florida Trend magazine. Mark, along with Trend publisher Andy Corty and Paul Tash, chairman and CEO of Times Publishing Co., has kept Trend a deep-thinking publication and a meaningful place to work despite the crisis in our profession. I thank them for my book leave, and thank John Annunziata, Michael Vogel, Amy Keller, and Art Levy for picking up my work and being such inspirational colleagues.

Another group of generous colleagues are those I got to know during my Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan in 2004a"2005. I thank KW director Charles Eisendrath for his continuing a.s.sistance, and a05 fellows Bill Duryea, Scott Elliott, and Jason Tanz for invaluable feedback on early chapters. In another KWa"Ann Arbor bond, I thank University of Michigan Press director Philip Pochoda, who published my first book, then generously connected me to the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency so I could find a trade press for my second.

For their helpful feedback on drafts and other support, I thank Mindy Blum, Mary Frances Campana, Michael Campana, Ronnie Cochran, David Colburn, Robin Craig, John Garrison, Paul Hoover, Pierce Jones, Christine Klein, Robert Knight, Barbra Larson, Stuart Leavenworth, Jennifer Leubbe, Jacki Levine, Michael Maidenberg, Karl Meyer, Bob Mooney, Jim Owens, Bill Pine, Ros Sadlier, Tom Swihart, Billy Townsend, Clive Wynne, and David Zetland. Karen Arnold, Julie Garrett, Kathy Grantham, Stephanie Milch, Claude Owens, Sonya Rudenstine, Judy Smith, and Jane Toby also contributed to Blue and its author in myriad ways, as did Louise OFarrell and Larry Leshan, Mike and Gracy Castine, Mary and Charles Furman, Diana and Dhanesh Samarasan, and Steven Doherty and Sydney Prince.

I thank my mom, Gerry Garrison, for her big heaps of confidence, and for the small water-news items she faithfully clips from her local newspaper and sends me in the mail. I tried to make this book equal parts pipeline and poetry. The duality may stem from my stepfather, Dr. Joe Garrison, who is science oriented, and my father, Rusty Barnett, who is more poetic. I thank each of them for their perspectives. My brother, Brett Garrison, gets a special medal for helping with both Blue and the children. Destined to be one of those superhero guys, Brett can organize campaign contributions in Excel and bake chocolate chip cookies topped with sea salt for his niece and nephew all in the same day.

I thank the Collins Center for Public Policy in Florida and President Rod Petrey for the journalistas travel grant that funded my reporting trips to Australia and Singapore. Further, the Collins Center vigorously promoted the vision for a Florida water ethic that I brought back from those trips. I am especially grateful to the centeras Steve Seibert for seeing the promise of a water ethic, and for being one of the big thinkers in my native state.

Likewise I am grateful to the Florida Earth Foundation and Executive Director Stan Bronson for seeing what important lessons the Netherlands holds for Florida, Louisiana, and other flood-p.r.o.ne parts of the United States, and for bringing me along on one of their eye-opening Florida-Holland Connection trips.

In Delft, the UNESCO Inst.i.tute for Water Education and Dr. Schalk Jan van Andel were especially helpful. I also thank Ria Geluk, a survivor of the 1957 storm, and the Watersnoodmuseum (Flood Museum) in Zeeland she helped make a reality, for helping me understand the disaster. In Singapore, I thank my knowledgeable guide Teo Yin Yin. Phil Kneebone and Clare Lugar helped make my trip to Australia a smooth and productive one.

Here at home, I repeat the thanks I made in my first book to what may be the two most underappreciated professions in America: librarians and environmental reporters. I am particularly grateful for the existence of Carnegie Librariesa"inspirational s.p.a.ces that gave me quiet corners to write in c.u.mberland, Wisconsin, and in Catskill, New York, during ostensible family vacations. I am grateful, too, for my productive hours at the University of Floridaas Library West and at the Savannah College of Art and Designas dramatic Jen Library.

While I had the luxury of pondering water over the life of this project, I relied on the quick-turnaround work and wisdom of reporters including Matt Weiser at the Sacramento Bee, Craig Pittman at the St. Petersburg Times, Mark Schleifstein at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Michael Grunwald at Time magazine, John Fleck at the Albuquerque Journal, and Osha Gray Davidson at the Phoenix Sun, along with the amazing water scribes Emily Green, in Southern California, and Peter Annin, the longtime Great Lakes journalist recently named managing director of the University of Notre Dameas Environmental Change Initiative. The journalists at the international consortium Circle of Blue have done a particularly good job filling the dearth of water reporting left by contraction in the newspaper industry. I am especially grateful to Bruce Ritchie at Florida Environments.com, not only for his important water reporting but also for our friendship that has now lasted a quarter century.

Deep thanks are due Curt Meine at the Center for Humans and Nature, author of the powerful biography Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, for providing such helpful background on Aldo and Luna Leopold and water-ethic scholarship. I thank Dominican sister Pat Siemen of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence and Sister of St. Joseph of Peace Suzanne Golas for their patient introduction to the ideas of Christian stewardship for water. Likewise, I thank artists Annie Pais and Stewart Thomas for continuing to show me the role that art and culture play in environmental stewardship. I am thankful to them, too, for their tireless promotion of my first book, Mirage, as part of their One Region/One Book project and in many other venues. I am forever indebted to the hundreds of citizens who came to my talks about Mirage, gave me their support, and led me to Blue with their questions about Americaas water. Blue was conceived following one of those talks, at the Cedar Key kitchen table of Mary Stone and Hans Van Meer.

The original metaphor for this book was not the blue revolution but the gentler blue path. I thank my editor at Beacon Press, Alexis Rizzuto, for kicking me off the path and onto the revolution. Her push herea"and there, and therea"made Blue much better. Alexis embodies every authoras top wish for an editor: one who cares deeply about the book and its subject. Also at Beacon Press, I thank Mandi Bleidorn for designing a book jacket worthy of the revolution, Sarah Laxton for its beautiful production, and Caitlin Meyer for her work on publicity. I am grateful to copy editor Mark Nichol for his excellent catches and to Tim Meyer for his eagle-eyed proofread.

The blue path endures, thanks to Annie and Stewart, who have turned that phrase into the name of a campaign to protect the springs of north Florida. I wish them success in saving the largest concentration of freshwater springs in the world. Every water author seems to have a special place that connects to childhood and inspires their work. Mine are the Suwannee River and those pane-clear springs. It seems fitting to end at one of them.

I wrote much of Blue at a silent retreat overlooking a springhead of Gum Slough, a jungly tributary of the Withlacoochee River. A family that wishes to remain anonymous owns more than eight hundred acres along the slough, including seven of fifteen feeder springs. They could have made multiple millions selling the property in any one of Floridaas housing booms. Instead, they placed these beautiful lands, wetlands, and springs in a series of conservation eas.e.m.e.nts to protect the watershed in perpetuity. Everything they do on the propertya"from giving quiet inspiration to a harried book author to bringing in grad students to research the little-touched springsa"is deliberately aimed at trying to save the planet.

I thank the family, and I thank the place, which I came to call Muse Spring. I began each writing day diving into its blue embrace. The resulting clarity led to my favorite parts of this booka"and yet one more reason to save Americaas freshwaters.

Christmas Day 2010 Savannah, Georgia.

Notes.

Chapter 1 The Illusion of Water Abundance.

1. Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 198a"200.[back]

2. Cynthia Barnett, aLiquidity,a Florida Trend, July 2004.[back]

3. Marybeth Bizjak, aGreen Thumbs,a Sacramento magazine, March 2007.[back]

4. Matt Weiser, aCapital Gushes Wasted Water: Metropolitan Regionas Per-Capita Daily Use Tops U.S. Average as Conservation Pledges Go Unmet,a Sacramento Bee, June 19, 2008. Weiser, whose a.n.a.lysis relied on the U.S. Geological Survey for California per capita rates, reports 287 gallons per person in the greater metropolitan region and 494 gallons per person in Granite Bay.[back]

5. States News Service, aBoat Removal Beginning at Reclamationas Folsom Lake Due to Dry-Year Reservoir Conditions,a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, August 5, 2009.[back]

6. San Juan Water District, aCurrent Water Conservation Warning: Stage 3a"Voluntary Reductions Now Requested,a Water Gram, May/June 2009, 1.[back]

7. U.S. Department of Energy, aTop Ten Utility Green Power Programs.a The Sacramento Munic.i.p.al Utility District had the fourth-highest partic.i.p.ation rate in the nation. See aCustomer Partic.i.p.ation Rate,a December 2009, http://apps3.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/resources/tables/topten.shtml.[back]

8. Residents of Aspen, Colorado, may actually use more than anyone else on the planet, according to statistics from Pitkin County that show an average of 1,851 gallons per person each day. See Bruce Finley, aAs Water Use Falls in Front Range, It Explodes Elsewhere in Colorado,a Denver Post, December 21, 2009.[back]

9. Weiser, aCapital Gushes Wasted Water.a[back]

10. Water Corporation of Western Australia, 2010 data; London State of the Environment Report, 2010; Vewin water-supply statistics for the Netherlands compiled for 2007.[back]

11. Nancy Vogel, aSacramento May Finally Go with Flow, Get Water Meters,a Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2003.[back]

12. Sacramento Department of Utilities, aWater Meters Coming to Sacramento,a http://www.cityofsacramento.org/utilities/water/water-meters.cfm.[back]

13. Andrew Maddocks, aFreshwater Crisis Not Included in Final Copenhagen Accord Despite Calls for Action,a Circle of Blue, January 4, 2010, http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/freshwater-crisis-not-included-in-final-copenhagen-accord-despite-calls-for-action/.[back]

14. Author interview with Tom Gohring, July 15, 2009.[back]

15. T. P. Barnett and D. W. Pierce, aWhen Will Lake Mead Go Dry?,a Water Resources Research 44 (March 2008): 4.[back]