Water History
pgleick | June 20, 2013With Matthew Heberger. This is a version of a post from the blog "Pacific Institute Insights"
How much water is there in America’s rivers, and where is it? Perhaps unsurprisingly, people have little sense of how their local water resources compare in size to other water resources. “Is that a big river? A little river?”
One of us [Gleick] grew up along the Hudson River on the East Coast, and encountered rivers that seemed to be about the same size: the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the Potomac. Anyone living in the West working on water issues becomes more familiar with the Colorado, the…
pgleick | June 10, 2013There is a long history of conflicts over water – the Pacific Institute maintains an online, searchable chronology of such conflicts going back 5,000 years. There were dozens of new examples in 2012, in countries from Latin America to Africa to Asia. (A full update for 2012 has been posted.) Access to water and the control of water systems have been causes of conflict, weapons have been used during conflicts, and water systems have been the targets of conflict.
One especially disturbing example of a major conflict, with complicated but direct connections to water, has developed over the past…
pgleick | May 10, 2013The Colorado River, recently named America’s most endangered river, supports millions of people in the American Southwest and northwest Mexico and helps irrigate millions of acres of land. It is shared by seven states in the U.S. and Mexico, through a complex series of legal agreements and treaties.
Yet every drop of water on the river is accounted for, used, reused, and transpired away, and today, no water reaches the Colorado River delta in an average year. Quite simply, demands on the river exceed the river’s average supply, and this problem is projected to get worse as populations…
pgleick | March 31, 2013There’s nothing like spending time in the desert to make one appreciate water.
It might seem strange to some that a water wonk like me spends considerable time in the desert. I've tried to go down to the vast Southern California desert for some time every year, typically in the spring when the winter cold is receding and the days are getting longer and there is a chance of some of the dramatic wildflower blooms that the sparse desert rains can produce. The skies at night are phenomenal; the landscapes primitive, and the wildlife raw. There is no better place to see how nature adapts to…
pgleick | March 21, 2013Some thoughts for today: the bad news and good news for World Water Day. [First, I think every day should be World Water Day, not just March 22nd, but hey, that’s just me.]
Stop taking your tap water for granted. Go to your tap, draw a glass of water, and drink it. Then remember that nearly a billion people still do not have reliable access to safe, affordable tap water and cannot do what you've just done.
Stop taking your toilet for granted. Nearly 2.5 billion people (more people than lived on the planet in the 1930s) don’t have safe sanitation.
Do you know anyone who had cholera, or typhoid…
pgleick | March 20, 2013Water is a theme that runs through all forms of popular culture, from books to myths to Hollywood and international films, with a growing number of shorter video pieces posted online at YouTube and similar sites. Having trouble keeping your Netflix list populated? Below are some classic (good and bad) movies – good and bad – with some kind of water theme: conflict over water in classic western movies; science-fiction thrillers with a water component; visions of the apocalypse where water access or contamination plays a role; and more. (An early version of this list was published in the last…
pgleick | March 11, 2013In a previous post here, I discussed the scourge of cholera – a waterborne disease largely vanquished in the wealthier nations by our water and wastewater treatment systems. Unfortunately, it remains widespread and lethal. Cholera is perhaps the most common and serious water-related disease, directly associated with the failure to provide safe drinking water and adequate sanitation to billions of people. Millions – mostly young children – die unnecessary deaths each year from these diseases.
This week is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the man who would help settle, once and for all,…