4- Wednesday, August 3, 1988 - North Share News

SOONER OR later, the
Americans will be coming
for our water. They're get-
ting thirsty.

And why are they so thirsty?
Because they are scandalously
wasteful and short-sighted about
their water supplies.

They go through 600 billion
gallons of water a year!

Back in the late °60s, when |
first researched the question of
water, I discovered that the inland
river system in the United States
was in terrible shape. {’d stood on
a bridge in Minneapolis and wat-
ched the Missouri burning.

In 1968, the U.S. was facing a
water crisis in many regions. The
southwest had been saved from
becoming a desert only by the in-
vention of deep-well turbine
pumps and new irrigation systems,
allowing everyone to tap into a
vast underground lake known as
the Ogallala aquifier.

Disaster was staved off for 20
years, as it turns out, but the
aquifier is now being drained at a
faster rate than it can replenish
itself. Some five million acres of
land will return to dust the mo-
ment it is drained.

In the High Plains, Arizona and
California, water levels are down
as much as 200 feet. Along the
Colorado Basin, consumption ex-
ceeds the rate of renewal. The Rio

BOB

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Grande area is down to 60 per cent
of its usual capacity.

It is not just that the water is
disappearing, cither.

Groundwater has been con-
taminated by toxic wastes in 39
states. There are some 1,500 coim-
munities in the United States where
inadequately treated sewage is be-
ing discharged, and another 2,700
small towns where there are no
treatment facilities at all.

Seven major river systems are
imminently threatened by con-
tamination from nuclear power
plants.

Yet, as the freshwater supplies
dwindle or become contaminated,
Americans are using more water
than ever, squandering it wildly.
While the average Canadian ~-
clean and neat as we are — goes
through some 930 gallons of water
a day, the average Yank uses up

2,000 gallons.

This is two and a half times as
much as they were using 30 years
ago. These guys are water
squanderers.

Worse, if the truth be known,
they are subsidized water
squanderers. Farmers in the
American West pay much less for
water than its actual cost, which
means they see absolutely no need
to conserve.

Writing in 1968, I was able to
report that ‘‘pressure is already
mounting for the purchase of Ca-
nadian waters.’’ In the 20 years

since then, the pressure has never
gone away.

If we look at the curve of inter-
est in the matter, however, we see
a sharp, almost exponential up-
ward stab this summer.

lt has to do, of course, with the
Greenhouse Effect. Scientists ure
depressingly in agreement on this
one. We are facing a prolonged
drought based on a global warm.
ing trend caused by pollutants in
the atmosphere.

For the Arnericans, it couldn't
be coming at a worse time. Having
squandered and fouled their water
resources, they now find
themselves having to cope with
hotter-than-expected weather as
well as shortages.

Just as water supplies are
becoming precious, dustbowl con-
ditions put enormous extra
pressure on them.

To the extent that the
Greenhouse Effect appears in-
evilable, it is equally inevitable
that the Americans are going to get
desperate.

In a desert, when the elephant
comes to the only watering hole,
the mouse can roar all it wants,
but that’s not going to stop old
Jumbo from getting his trunk in
there.

It is the first article of the na-
tionalist creed that Canadian
waters are sacrosanct and cannot
be exported without destroying our
culture. Yet, plainly, there is going
to be no getting around it. Sooner
or later, we'll have to get on with
our other major historic task — as
drawers of water.

Ido not understand the concern
of Canadians demanding a ban on
water exports. We scream bloody
murder when the Yanks jack up
the customs duties on our exports
of lumber. We are eager to sell of f
our forests — in pieces. But to
divert the Mow of our rivers and
lakes is somehow sinful.

Compared with the damage
done to the environment by the

logging empires, how harmful
could a few big ditches be,
anyway? What a wonderfully clean
way to make money — by pump-
ing surplus water to thirsty rich
folks down south.

As the southern part of the con-
uinent gets hotter and drier, keep in
mind there isn’t just the question
of American thirst. Mexico faces a

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water crisis that is (ruly frighten-
ing, having polluted nearly every
square mile of her territory.

How will a country that is
already mostly desert, and mostly
unbearably hot, cope as the
temperatures rise? Mexico is going
to want to talk with us about water

PESSainte eas

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